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    SubjectRe: [PATCH 00/13] cross rename v4
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    On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 11:02 AM, David Howells <dhowells@redhat.com> wrote:
    >
    > Whilst that does seem reasonable, what about all the other software that
    > iterates over a directory? Some of that is surely not going to know about
    > DT_WHT.

    So?

    Remeber: whiteout entries do not exist "normally". No normal apps
    should care or see them, since the whole and only point of them is
    when they are part of a union mount (in which case they are not
    visible).

    So the "how do you see whiteouts" is really only about the raw
    filesystem mount when *not* in the normal place.

    IOW, it's not like these guys are going to show up in users home
    directories etc. It's more like a special device node than a file - we
    need to care about some basic system management interfaces, not about
    "random apps". So "coreutils" is the primary user, although I guess a
    few IT people would prefer for things like Nautilus etc random file
    managers to be able to show them nicely too. But if they show up as an
    icon with a question mark on them or whatever, that's really not a big
    deal either.

    Sure, maybe they'll look odd in some graphical file chooser *if*
    somebody makes them show up, but I think creation of a whiteout - if
    we allow it at all outside of the union mount itself - should be a
    root-only thing (the same way mknod is) so quite frankly, it falls
    under "filesystem corruption makes my directory listings look odd -
    cry me a river".

    (I do think we should allow creation - but for root only - for
    management and testing purposes, but I really think it's a secondary
    issue, and I do think we should literally use "mknod()" - either with
    a new S_IFWHT or even just making use of existing S_IFCHR just so you
    could use the user-space "mknod" to create it with some magic
    major/minor combination.

    Linus


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