Al Viro <v...@zeniv.linux.org.uk> wrote:

> Umm...  What's so special about cell/volume/domain/realm?

Nothing particularly.  But they're something various network filesystems might
find useful.  cell for AFS, domain for CIFS, realm for things that use
kerberos.

volume_id/uuid/name would be usable by ext4 too, for example.

> And what do we do when a random filesystem gets added - should its
> parameters go into catch-all pile (attr_parameter),

FSINFO_ATTR_PARAMETER is a way to enumerate the configuration parameters
passed to mount, as an alternative to parsing /proc/mounts.  So, for example,
afs has:

        enum afs_param {
                Opt_autocell,
                Opt_dyn,
                Opt_source,
                nr__afs_params
        };

        static const struct fs_parameter_spec afs_param_specs[nr__afs_params] = 
{
                [Opt_autocell]  = { fs_param_takes_no_value },
                [Opt_dyn]       = { fs_param_takes_no_value },
                [Opt_source]    = { fs_param_is_string },
        };

        static const struct constant_table afs_param_keys[] = {
                { "autocell",   Opt_autocell },
                { "dyn",        Opt_dyn },
                { "source",     Opt_source },
        };

My thought is that calling fsinfo(..., "/some/afs/file", &params, ...) with:

        struct fsinfo_params params = {
                .request = FSINFO_ATTR_PARAMETER,
                .Nth     = <parameter-number>,
        };

would get you back, for example:

        Nth     Result
        ======= ==========================================
        0       "autocell" (or "" if not set)
        1       "dyn" (or "" if not set)
        2       "source=%#grand.central.org:root.cell."
        3+      -ENODATA (ie. there are no more)

where Nth corresponds to the parameter specified by
FSINFO_ATTR_PARAM_DESCRIPTION and Nth.

Now for some filesystems, cgroups-v1 for example, there are parameters beyond
the list (the subsystem name) and these can be listed after the predefined
parameters, eg.:

        Nth     Result
        ======= ==========================================
        0       "all" or ""
        1       "clone_children" or ""
        2       "cpuset_v2_mode" or ""
        3       "name" or ""
        4       "none" or ""
        5       "noprefix" or ""
        6       "release_agent" or ""
        7       "xattr" or ""
        8       "<subsys0>" or ""
        9       "<subsys1>" or ""
        10      "<subsys2>" or ""
        ...     -ENODATA

> or should they get classes of their own?

Yes.

> For Cthulhu sake, who's going to maintain that enum in face of
> random out-of-tree filesystems, each wanting a class or two its own?

They don't get their own numbers unless they're in-tree.  Full stop.  We have
the same issue with system calls and not-yet-upstream new syscalls.

Note that, as I have the code now, the "type" of return value for each
attribute must also be declared to the fsinfo() core, and the fsinfo core does
the copy to/from userspace.

> We'd tried that with device numbers; ask hpa how well has that
> worked and how much did he love the whole experience...

What would you do instead?  I would prefer to avoid using text strings as keys
because then I need a big lookup table, and possibly this gets devolved to
each filesystem to handle - which ends up even more of a mess because then
there's nothing to hold consistency.

David

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