summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/fs/notify/fsnotify.h
AgeCommit message (Collapse)Author
2018-09-03fsnotify: add super block object typeAmir Goldstein
Add the infrastructure to attach a mark to a super_block struct and detach all attached marks when super block is destroyed. This is going to be used by fanotify backend to setup super block marks. Signed-off-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2018-06-27fsnotify: let connector point to an abstract objectAmir Goldstein
Make the code to attach/detach a connector to object more generic by letting the fsnotify connector point to an abstract fsnotify_connp_t. Code that needs to dereference an inode or mount object now uses the helpers fsnotify_conn_{inode,mount}. Signed-off-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2018-06-27fsnotify: pass connp and object type to fsnotify_add_mark()Amir Goldstein
Instead of passing inode and vfsmount arguments to fsnotify_add_mark() and its _locked variant, pass an abstract object pointer and the object type. The helpers fsnotify_obj_{inode,mount} are added to get the concrete object pointer from abstract object pointer. Signed-off-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2018-06-27fsnotify: use typedef fsnotify_connp_t for brevityAmir Goldstein
The object marks manipulation functions fsnotify_destroy_marks() fsnotify_find_mark() and their helpers take an argument of type struct fsnotify_mark_connector __rcu ** to dereference the connector pointer. use a typedef to describe this type for brevity. Signed-off-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2018-05-18fsnotify: remove redundant arguments to handle_event()Amir Goldstein
inode_mark and vfsmount_mark arguments are passed to handle_event() operation as function arguments as well as on iter_info struct. The difference is that iter_info struct may contain marks that should not be handled and are represented as NULL arguments to inode_mark or vfsmount_mark. Instead of passing the inode_mark and vfsmount_mark arguments, add a report_mask member to iter_info struct to indicate which marks should be handled, versus marks that should only be kept alive during user wait. This change is going to be used for passing more mark types with handle_event() (i.e. super block marks). Signed-off-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-11-02License cleanup: add SPDX GPL-2.0 license identifier to files with no licenseGreg Kroah-Hartman
Many source files in the tree are missing licensing information, which makes it harder for compliance tools to determine the correct license. By default all files without license information are under the default license of the kernel, which is GPL version 2. Update the files which contain no license information with the 'GPL-2.0' SPDX license identifier. The SPDX identifier is a legally binding shorthand, which can be used instead of the full boiler plate text. This patch is based on work done by Thomas Gleixner and Kate Stewart and Philippe Ombredanne. How this work was done: Patches were generated and checked against linux-4.14-rc6 for a subset of the use cases: - file had no licensing information it it. - file was a */uapi/* one with no licensing information in it, - file was a */uapi/* one with existing licensing information, Further patches will be generated in subsequent months to fix up cases where non-standard license headers were used, and references to license had to be inferred by heuristics based on keywords. The analysis to determine which SPDX License Identifier to be applied to a file was done in a spreadsheet of side by side results from of the output of two independent scanners (ScanCode & Windriver) producing SPDX tag:value files created by Philippe Ombredanne. Philippe prepared the base worksheet, and did an initial spot review of a few 1000 files. The 4.13 kernel was the starting point of the analysis with 60,537 files assessed. Kate Stewart did a file by file comparison of the scanner results in the spreadsheet to determine which SPDX license identifier(s) to be applied to the file. She confirmed any determination that was not immediately clear with lawyers working with the Linux Foundation. Criteria used to select files for SPDX license identifier tagging was: - Files considered eligible had to be source code files. - Make and config files were included as candidates if they contained >5 lines of source - File already had some variant of a license header in it (even if <5 lines). All documentation files were explicitly excluded. The following heuristics were used to determine which SPDX license identifiers to apply. - when both scanners couldn't find any license traces, file was considered to have no license information in it, and the top level COPYING file license applied. For non */uapi/* files that summary was: SPDX license identifier # files ---------------------------------------------------|------- GPL-2.0 11139 and resulted in the first patch in this series. If that file was a */uapi/* path one, it was "GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note" otherwise it was "GPL-2.0". Results of that was: SPDX license identifier # files ---------------------------------------------------|------- GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note 930 and resulted in the second patch in this series. - if a file had some form of licensing information in it, and was one of the */uapi/* ones, it was denoted with the Linux-syscall-note if any GPL family license was found in the file or had no licensing in it (per prior point). Results summary: SPDX license identifier # files ---------------------------------------------------|------ GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note 270 GPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note 169 ((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-2-Clause) 21 ((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-3-Clause) 17 LGPL-2.1+ WITH Linux-syscall-note 15 GPL-1.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note 14 ((GPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR BSD-3-Clause) 5 LGPL-2.0+ WITH Linux-syscall-note 4 LGPL-2.1 WITH Linux-syscall-note 3 ((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) OR MIT) 3 ((GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note) AND MIT) 1 and that resulted in the third patch in this series. - when the two scanners agreed on the detected license(s), that became the concluded license(s). - when there was disagreement between the two scanners (one detected a license but the other didn't, or they both detected different licenses) a manual inspection of the file occurred. - In most cases a manual inspection of the information in the file resulted in a clear resolution of the license that should apply (and which scanner probably needed to revisit its heuristics). - When it was not immediately clear, the license identifier was confirmed with lawyers working with the Linux Foundation. - If there was any question as to the appropriate license identifier, the file was flagged for further research and to be revisited later in time. In total, over 70 hours of logged manual review was done on the spreadsheet to determine the SPDX license identifiers to apply to the source files by Kate, Philippe, Thomas and, in some cases, confirmation by lawyers working with the Linux Foundation. Kate also obtained a third independent scan of the 4.13 code base from FOSSology, and compared selected files where the other two scanners disagreed against that SPDX file, to see if there was new insights. The Windriver scanner is based on an older version of FOSSology in part, so they are related. Thomas did random spot checks in about 500 files from the spreadsheets for the uapi headers and agreed with SPDX license identifier in the files he inspected. For the non-uapi files Thomas did random spot checks in about 15000 files. In initial set of patches against 4.14-rc6, 3 files were found to have copy/paste license identifier errors, and have been fixed to reflect the correct identifier. Additionally Philippe spent 10 hours this week doing a detailed manual inspection and review of the 12,461 patched files from the initial patch version early this week with: - a full scancode scan run, collecting the matched texts, detected license ids and scores - reviewing anything where there was a license detected (about 500+ files) to ensure that the applied SPDX license was correct - reviewing anything where there was no detection but the patch license was not GPL-2.0 WITH Linux-syscall-note to ensure that the applied SPDX license was correct This produced a worksheet with 20 files needing minor correction. This worksheet was then exported into 3 different .csv files for the different types of files to be modified. These .csv files were then reviewed by Greg. Thomas wrote a script to parse the csv files and add the proper SPDX tag to the file, in the format that the file expected. This script was further refined by Greg based on the output to detect more types of files automatically and to distinguish between header and source .c files (which need different comment types.) Finally Greg ran the script using the .csv files to generate the patches. Reviewed-by: Kate Stewart <kstewart@linuxfoundation.org> Reviewed-by: Philippe Ombredanne <pombredanne@nexb.com> Reviewed-by: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Remove fsnotify_find_{inode|vfsmount}_mark()Jan Kara
These are very thin wrappers, just remove them. Drop fs/notify/vfsmount_mark.c as it is empty now. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Remove fsnotify_detach_group_marks()Jan Kara
The function is already mostly contained in what fsnotify_clear_marks_by_group() does. Just update that function to not select marks when all of them should be destroyed and remove fsnotify_detach_group_marks(). Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Provide framework for dropping SRCU lock in ->handle_eventJan Kara
fanotify wants to drop fsnotify_mark_srcu lock when waiting for response from userspace so that the whole notification subsystem is not blocked during that time. This patch provides a framework for safely getting mark reference for a mark found in the object list which pins the mark in that list. We can then drop fsnotify_mark_srcu, wait for userspace response and then safely continue iteration of the object list once we reaquire fsnotify_mark_srcu. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Remove special handling of mark destruction on group shutdownJan Kara
Currently we queue all marks for destruction on group shutdown and then destroy them from fsnotify_destroy_group() instead from a worker thread which is the usual path. However worker can already be processing some list of marks to destroy so this does not make 100% all marks are really destroyed by the time group is shut down. This isn't a big problem as each mark holds group reference and thus group stays partially alive until all marks are really freed but there's no point in complicating our lives - just wait for the delayed work to be finished instead. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Free fsnotify_mark_connector when there is no mark attachedJan Kara
Currently we free fsnotify_mark_connector structure only when inode / vfsmount is getting freed. This can however impose noticeable memory overhead when marks get attached to inodes only temporarily. So free the connector structure once the last mark is detached from the object. Since notification infrastructure can be working with the connector under the protection of fsnotify_mark_srcu, we have to be careful and free the fsnotify_mark_connector only after SRCU period passes. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Remove indirection from fsnotify_detach_mark()Jan Kara
fsnotify_detach_mark() calls fsnotify_destroy_inode_mark() or fsnotify_destroy_vfsmount_mark() to remove mark from object list. These two functions are however very similar and differ only in the lock they use to protect the object list of marks. Simplify the code by removing the indirection and removing mark from the object list in a common function. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Determine lock in fsnotify_destroy_marks()Jan Kara
Instead of passing spinlock into fsnotify_destroy_marks() determine it directly in that function from the connector type. This will reduce code churn when changing lock protecting list of marks. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Move locking into fsnotify_recalc_mask()Jan Kara
Move locking of locks protecting a list of marks into fsnotify_recalc_mask(). This reduces code churn in the following patch which changes the lock protecting the list of marks. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Remove indirection from mark list additionJan Kara
Adding notification mark to object list has been currently done through fsnotify_add_{inode|vfsmount}_mark() helpers from fsnotify_add_mark_locked() which call fsnotify_add_mark_list(). Remove this unnecessary indirection to simplify the code. Pushing all the locking to fsnotify_add_mark_list() also allows us to allocate the connector structure with GFP_KERNEL mode. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Make fsnotify_mark_connector hold inode referenceJan Kara
Currently inode reference is held by fsnotify marks. Change the rules so that inode reference is held by fsnotify_mark_connector structure whenever the list is non-empty. This simplifies the code and is more logical. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Move object pointer to fsnotify_mark_connectorJan Kara
Move pointer to inode / vfsmount from mark itself to the fsnotify_mark_connector structure. This is another step on the path towards decoupling inode / vfsmount lifetime from notification mark lifetime. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2017-04-10fsnotify: Move mark list head from object into dedicated structureJan Kara
Currently notification marks are attached to object (inode or vfsmnt) by a hlist_head in the object. The list is also protected by a spinlock in the object. So while there is any mark attached to the list of marks, the object must be pinned in memory (and thus e.g. last iput() deleting inode cannot happen). Also for list iteration in fsnotify() to work, we must hold fsnotify_mark_srcu lock so that mark itself and mark->obj_list.next cannot get freed. Thus we are required to wait for response to fanotify events from userspace process with fsnotify_mark_srcu lock held. That causes issues when userspace process is buggy and does not reply to some event - basically the whole notification subsystem gets eventually stuck. So to be able to drop fsnotify_mark_srcu lock while waiting for response, we have to pin the mark in memory and make sure it stays in the object list (as removing the mark waiting for response could lead to lost notification events for groups later in the list). However we don't want inode reclaim to block on such mark as that would lead to system just locking up elsewhere. This commit is the first in the series that paves way towards solving these conflicting lifetime needs. Instead of anchoring the list of marks directly in the object, we anchor it in a dedicated structure (fsnotify_mark_connector) and just point to that structure from the object. The following commits will also add spinlock protecting the list and object pointer to the structure. Reviewed-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com> Reviewed-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com> Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
2016-05-19fsnotify: avoid spurious EMFILE errors from inotify_init()Jan Kara
Inotify instance is destroyed when all references to it are dropped. That not only means that the corresponding file descriptor needs to be closed but also that all corresponding instance marks are freed (as each mark holds a reference to the inotify instance). However marks are freed only after SRCU period ends which can take some time and thus if user rapidly creates and frees inotify instances, number of existing inotify instances can exceed max_user_instances limit although from user point of view there is always at most one existing instance. Thus inotify_init() returns EMFILE error which is hard to justify from user point of view. This problem is exposed by LTP inotify06 testcase on some machines. We fix the problem by making sure all group marks are properly freed while destroying inotify instance. We wait for SRCU period to end in that path anyway since we have to make sure there is no event being added to the instance while we are tearing down the instance. So it takes only some plumbing to allow for marks to be destroyed in that path as well and not from a dedicated work item. [akpm@linux-foundation.org: coding-style fixes] Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Reported-by: Xiaoguang Wang <wangxg.fnst@cn.fujitsu.com> Tested-by: Xiaoguang Wang <wangxg.fnst@cn.fujitsu.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2015-09-04fsnotify: remove mark->free_listJan Kara
Free list is used when all marks on given inode / mount should be destroyed when inode / mount is going away. However we can free all of the marks without using a special list with some care. Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-12-13fsnotify: unify inode and mount marks handlingJan Kara
There's a lot of common code in inode and mount marks handling. Factor it out to a common helper function. Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Cc: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com> Cc: Heinrich Schuchardt <xypron.glpk@gmx.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-11-13fanotify: fix notification of groups with inode & mount marksJan Kara
fsnotify() needs to merge inode and mount marks lists when notifying groups about events so that ignore masks from inode marks are reflected in mount mark notifications and groups are notified in proper order (according to priorities). Currently the sorting of the lists done by fsnotify_add_inode_mark() / fsnotify_add_vfsmount_mark() and fsnotify() differed which resulted ignore masks not being used in some cases. Fix the problem by always using the same comparison function when sorting / merging the mark lists. Thanks to Heinrich Schuchardt for improvements of my patch. Link: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87721 Signed-off-by: Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz> Reported-by: Heinrich Schuchardt <xypron.glpk@gmx.de> Tested-by: Heinrich Schuchardt <xypron.glpk@gmx.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2014-10-09fs/notify/group.c: make fsnotify_final_destroy_group() staticAndrew Morton
No callers outside this file. Cc: Sasha Levin <sasha.levin@oracle.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
2010-07-28fsnotify: remove global fsnotify groups listsEric Paris
The global fsnotify groups lists were invented as a way to increase the performance of fsnotify by shortcutting events which were not interesting. With the changes to walk the object lists rather than global groups lists these shortcuts are not useful. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: remove the global masksEric Paris
Because we walk the object->fsnotify_marks list instead of the global fsnotify groups list we don't need the fsnotify_inode_mask and fsnotify_vfsmount_mask as these were simply shortcuts in fsnotify() for performance. They are now extra checks, rip them out. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: srcu to protect read side of inode and vfsmount locksEric Paris
Currently reading the inode->i_fsnotify_marks or vfsmount->mnt_fsnotify_marks lists are protected by a spinlock on both the read and the write side. This patch protects the read side of those lists with a new single srcu. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: allow marks to not pin inodes in coreEric Paris
inotify marks must pin inodes in core. dnotify doesn't technically need to since they are closed when the directory is closed. fanotify also need to pin inodes in core as it works today. But the next step is to introduce the concept of 'ignored masks' which is actually a mask of events for an inode of no interest. I claim that these should be liberally sent to the kernel and should not pin the inode in core. If the inode is brought back in the listener will get an event it may have thought excluded, but this is not a serious situation and one any listener should deal with. This patch lays the ground work for non-pinning inode marks by using lazy inode pinning. We do not pin a mark until it has a non-zero mask entry. If a listener new sets a mask we never pin the inode. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: Infrastructure for per-mount watchesAndreas Gruenbacher
Per-mount watches allow groups to listen to fsnotify events on an entire mount. This patch simply adds and initializes the fields needed in the vfsmount struct to make this happen. Signed-off-by: Andreas Gruenbacher <agruen@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: vfsmount marks generic functionsEric Paris
Much like inode-mark.c has all of the code dealing with marks on inodes this patch adds a vfsmount-mark.c which has similar code but is intended for marks on vfsmounts. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: split generic and inode specific mark codeEric Paris
currently all marking is done by functions in inode-mark.c. Some of this is pretty generic and should be instead done in a generic function and we should only put the inode specific code in inode-mark.c Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: mount point listeners list and global maskEric Paris
currently all of the notification systems implemented select which inodes they care about and receive messages only about those inodes (or the children of those inodes.) This patch begins to flesh out fsnotify support for the concept of listeners that want to hear notification for an inode accessed below a given monut point. This patch implements a second list of fsnotify groups to hold these types of groups and a second global mask to hold the events of interest for this type of group. The reason we want a second group list and mask is because the inode based notification should_send_event support which makes each group look for a mark on the given inode. With one nfsmount listener that means that every group would have to take the inode->i_lock, look for their mark, not find one, and return for every operation. By seperating vfsmount from inode listeners only when there is a inode listener will the inode groups have to look for their mark and take the inode lock. vfsmount listeners will have to grab the lock and look for a mark but there should be fewer of them, and one vfsmount listener won't cause the i_lock to be grabbed and released for every fsnotify group on every io operation. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: add groups to fsnotify_inode_groups when registering inode watchEric Paris
Currently all fsnotify groups are added immediately to the fsnotify_inode_groups list upon creation. This means, even groups with no watches (common for audit) will be on the global tracking list and will get checked for every event. This patch adds groups to the global list on when the first inode mark is added to the group. Signed-of-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2010-07-28fsnotify: rename fsnotify_groups to fsnotify_inode_groupsEric Paris
Simple renaming patch. fsnotify is about to support mount point listeners so I am renaming fsnotify_groups and fsnotify_mask to indicate these are lists used only for groups which have watches on inodes. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com>
2009-06-11fsnotify: generic notification queue and waitqEric Paris
inotify needs to do asyc notification in which event information is stored on a queue until the listener is ready to receive it. This patch implements a generic notification queue for inotify (and later fanotify) to store events to be sent at a later time. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com> Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
2009-06-11fsnotify: parent event notificationEric Paris
inotify and dnotify both use a similar parent notification mechanism. We add a generic parent notification mechanism to fsnotify for both of these to use. This new machanism also adds the dentry flag optimization which exists for inotify to dnotify. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com> Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
2009-06-11fsnotify: add marks to inodes so groups can interpret how to handle those inodesEric Paris
This patch creates a way for fsnotify groups to attach marks to inodes. These marks have little meaning to the generic fsnotify infrastructure and thus their meaning should be interpreted by the group that attached them to the inode's list. dnotify and inotify will make use of these markings to indicate which inodes are of interest to their respective groups. But this implementation has the useful property that in the future other listeners could actually use the marks for the exact opposite reason, aka to indicate which inodes it had NO interest in. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com> Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
2009-06-11fsnotify: unified filesystem notification backendEric Paris
fsnotify is a backend for filesystem notification. fsnotify does not provide any userspace interface but does provide the basis needed for other notification schemes such as dnotify. fsnotify can be extended to be the backend for inotify or the upcoming fanotify. fsnotify provides a mechanism for "groups" to register for some set of filesystem events and to then deliver those events to those groups for processing. fsnotify has a number of benefits, the first being actually shrinking the size of an inode. Before fsnotify to support both dnotify and inotify an inode had unsigned long i_dnotify_mask; /* Directory notify events */ struct dnotify_struct *i_dnotify; /* for directory notifications */ struct list_head inotify_watches; /* watches on this inode */ struct mutex inotify_mutex; /* protects the watches list But with fsnotify this same functionallity (and more) is done with just __u32 i_fsnotify_mask; /* all events for this inode */ struct hlist_head i_fsnotify_mark_entries; /* marks on this inode */ That's right, inotify, dnotify, and fanotify all in 64 bits. We used that much space just in inotify_watches alone, before this patch set. fsnotify object lifetime and locking is MUCH better than what we have today. inotify locking is incredibly complex. See 8f7b0ba1c8539 as an example of what's been busted since inception. inotify needs to know internal semantics of superblock destruction and unmounting to function. The inode pinning and vfs contortions are horrible. no fsnotify implementers do allocation under locks. This means things like f04b30de3 which (due to an overabundance of caution) changes GFP_KERNEL to GFP_NOFS can be reverted. There are no longer any allocation rules when using or implementing your own fsnotify listener. fsnotify paves the way for fanotify. In brief fanotify is a notification mechanism that delivers the lisener both an 'event' and an open file descriptor to the object in question. This means that fanotify is pathname agnostic. Some on lkml may not care for the original companies or users that pushed for TALPA, but fanotify was designed with flexibility and input for other users in mind. The readahead group expressed interest in fanotify as it could be used to profile disk access on boot without breaking the audit system. The desktop search groups have also expressed interest in fanotify as it solves a number of the race conditions and problems present with managing inotify when more than a limited number of specific files are of interest. fanotify can provide for a userspace access control system which makes it a clean interface for AV vendors to hook without trying to do binary patching on the syscall table, LSM, and everywhere else they do their things today. With this patch series fanotify can be implemented in less than 1200 lines of easy to review code. Almost all of which is the socket based user interface. This patch series builds fsnotify to the point that it can implement dnotify and inotify_user. Patches exist and will be sent soon after acceptance to finish the in kernel inotify conversion (audit) and implement fanotify. Signed-off-by: Eric Paris <eparis@redhat.com> Acked-by: Al Viro <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk> Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>