Hi,

I've written a combination of a hierarchical and tag-based filesystem  
using Fuse. There is the hierarchical part, which is a mirror of a  
folder on my OS X drive. For each file in the hierarchy, an entry can  
exist in the database (xapian) which links it with certain tags. This  
information is usable due to "special folders". In every folder of the  
hierarchical part of the filesystem in Fuse, the special folders +ADD,  
+REMOVE and +FIND exist to add/remove tags to/from files and search  
for files using the tags. These are off-course "virtual", they don't  
exist in the actual hierarchy.

I'm currently experiencing various problems and I have no clue what's  
going wrong. I've been looking through log files for days and don't  
find it.

These are the problems:

1) Copy external files/folders to the Fuse filesystem often gives  
errors.

When I do this action in terminal, I get "could not copy extended  
attributes to ....: Operation not permitted" errors for some of the  
files. I haven't implemented any extended attribute functions.

When I do the same action in Finder, I get one of the following errors:
- The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient  
privileges for "file.jpg".
- The operation cannot be completed because the item "file.jpg" is  
locked

I can't seem to find any logic in it. I have a folder of 30 images I  
try to copy. Sometimes copying a file in the Finder works, sometimes  
not...
I get 8 errors in terminal about extended attributes, but this does  
not match with the amount of files that give errors in the Finder.

When I use the novncache option, this problem goes away, but the  
filesystem itself gets slower.


2) Finder "jumps" to parent folders in certain actions with virtual  
folders

There are actually 2 places I often get this problem:

2a) When adding a tag in a Finder save dialog

When I want to save a file, I go to the hierarchical directory of my  
choice. Then to directly tag files, I can go into the special folder  
+ADD. This gives me a list of all tags, so I can select one. After  
selecting one I can go on to add as many tags as I'd like to the file.  
This works fine.

Now if I want to use a new tag while saving a file, I would go into  
the +ADD special folder and create a folder with the tag name of my  
choice. That's where it goes wrong. For a moment, I see the folder  
getting created and the content being displayed (to further select  
other tags). Then the Finder "jumps" away. That is, the name of the  
created folder is still visible in the dropdown at the top of the save  
dialog. The subfolders are gone and when clicking on the dropdown at  
the top, I no longer see the parent folders,...

This ALWAYS happens.
At the end of the mkdir() function, I called readdir(parent) and  
getattr(newfolder) to check if the new folder exists and it does. So  
it doesn't seem to be that there's some kind of delay between adding  
the folder (tag) to the database (mkdir) and finding it in the  
database (readdir and getattr).

2b) When browsing +FIND

When you want to search for a file based on tags, you open up the  
special folder +FIND from the directory of your choice. A folder list  
of all tags used on any file in the directory of any of its subfolders  
will be shown. Opening one of these folders (tags) gives you a list of  
special folders with +FILES, +AND, ...
Opening +FILES would give all files matching the "query".
Opening +AND would give a list of folders of all tags that can be  
combined with the previous selected tags.

Example:
/photos/+FIND --> list of all tags (displayed as folders) for files  
in /photos or any of its subfolders
/photos/+FIND/tag1 --> special folders +FILES, +AND, ...
/photos/+FIND/tag1/+AND --> list of all tags (displayed as folders)  
that can be combined with tag1
/photos/+FIND/tag1/+AND/tag2 --> special folders +FILES, +AND, ...
/photos/+FIND/tag1/+AND/tag2/+FILES --> list all files in /photos or  
any of its subfolders, that are tagged with both tag1 and tag2

In some situations (I haven't really found a certain situation that  
always triggers this behavior), I see the content of a folder gets  
displayed very shortly, followed by the Finder "jumping" back to a  
parent folder. Often, folders then become impossible to open (In  
column mode in Finder, I just see some details as you would when  
selecting a file).

I'm not entirely sure, but it is possible that the behavior of 2b does  
not occur when the novncache option is used. 2a however happens all  
the time.


3) I cannot save a Microsoft Word file directly in the filesystem.

I can save files from within preview, textmate, textedit, safari,  
openoffice, ...
I cannot save files from within Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop, Audio  
Recorder (no error here, but the file won't play), ...



Any ideas on any of the problems would be great.

Thanks in advance,

Karel

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