Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 31 Aug 2010 15:29:19 -0400 | From | Valerie Aurora <> | Subject | Re: [PATCH 0/5] hybrid union filesystem prototype |
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On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 12:18:11PM +0200, Miklos Szeredi wrote: > On Sun, 29 Aug 2010, Neil Brown wrote: > > > My comment about set-theory unions being commutative set me thinking. I > > really don't think "union" is the right name for this thing. There is > > nothing about it which really fits that proper definition of a union. > > whiteouts mean that even the list of names in a directory is not the union of > > the lists of names in the upper and lower directories. > > "overlay" is a much more accurate name. But union seems to be the name > > that is most used. I wonder if it is too late to change that. > > We could call it overlayfs. People learn new names quickly :)
Union mounts was named "writable overlays" for one release in an attempt to get away from the "arbitrary union of file systems" idea. I think it helped, but went back to union mounts since it was more familiar and made prettier function names.
The config option for union mounts says:
Union mounts allow you to mount a transparent writable layer over a read-only file system, for example, an ext3 partition on a hard drive over a CD-ROM root file system image.
-VAL
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