The aim of this patch is to replace the BTRFS_IOC_TREE_SEARCH ioctl when it is used to obtain information about the chunks/block groups.
The problems in using the BTRFS_IOC_TREE_SEARCH is that it access the very low data structure of BTRFS. This means: 1) this would be complicated a possible change of the disk format 2) it requires the root privileges The new BTRFS_IOC_GET_CHUNK_INFO is an attempt to address these issue. This ioctl can be called from a not root user: I think that the data exposed are not sensibile data. In a separate patches set, there is an update to the btrfs utility to allow it to use this new ioctl int the load_chunk_info() function. So now it is possible to do "btrfs fi us" without root privileges. This is an RFC, because I want to be sure that 1) it is right my understanding that the chunk info are not a "sensibile data" 2) the api is a good api. In particular I am not sure that returning -EAGAIN is the right thing to do when further data is available but the buffer is not enough. Comments are welcome BR G.Baroncelli -- gpg @keyserver.linux.it: Goffredo Baroncelli <kreijackATinwind.it> Key fingerprint BBF5 1610 0B64 DAC6 5F7D 17B2 0EDA 9B37 8B82 E0B5 -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-btrfs" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
