Am Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:23:37 +0100 (CET) schrieb Jan Engelhardt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
> > On Feb 14 2008 16:19, Hans-Jürgen Koch wrote: > >> > >> Q: What if a program attempts to mkdir /dev/nullmnt/foo to just > >> create a file /dev/nullmnt/foo/barfile? > >> A: /dev/nullmnt/foo must continue to exist or be accepted for a > >> while, or perhaps for eternity. > > > >Well, the problem seems to be that a "directory" is not just data but > >also contains metadata. While it's easy to write data to /dev/null, > >you cannot simply discard metadata associated with a directory. So, > >such a "/dev/null-directory" would have to remember metadata (at > >least all created filenames including subdirectories) in the same > >way as other filesystems do. Only file _content_ can be discarded. > > Not even that. Suppose a userspace program (whose output you'd like > to discard) does: [...] Well, if an application wants to read back written data, you can never use such a thing, not even in simple cases where the existing /dev/null would be enough. > } > > >To be honest, I still cannot see many sensible usecases for that... > > I agree. Good :-) Hans -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
