linux/fs/sysfs
Robert Love 0eeca28300 [PATCH] inotify
inotify is intended to correct the deficiencies of dnotify, particularly
its inability to scale and its terrible user interface:

        * dnotify requires the opening of one fd per each directory
          that you intend to watch. This quickly results in too many
          open files and pins removable media, preventing unmount.
        * dnotify is directory-based. You only learn about changes to
          directories. Sure, a change to a file in a directory affects
          the directory, but you are then forced to keep a cache of
          stat structures.
        * dnotify's interface to user-space is awful.  Signals?

inotify provides a more usable, simple, powerful solution to file change
notification:

        * inotify's interface is a system call that returns a fd, not SIGIO.
	  You get a single fd, which is select()-able.
        * inotify has an event that says "the filesystem that the item
          you were watching is on was unmounted."
        * inotify can watch directories or files.

Inotify is currently used by Beagle (a desktop search infrastructure),
Gamin (a FAM replacement), and other projects.

See Documentation/filesystems/inotify.txt.

Signed-off-by: Robert Love <rml@novell.com>
Cc: John McCutchan <ttb@tentacle.dhs.org>
Cc: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
2005-07-12 20:38:38 -07:00
..
Makefile Linux-2.6.12-rc2 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -07:00
bin.c [PATCH] sysfs: if show/store is missing return -EIO 2005-06-20 15:15:02 -07:00
dir.c [PATCH] remove duplicate get_dentry functions in various places 2005-06-23 09:45:20 -07:00
file.c [PATCH] inotify 2005-07-12 20:38:38 -07:00
group.c [PATCH] remove duplicate get_dentry functions in various places 2005-06-23 09:45:20 -07:00
inode.c [PATCH] remove duplicate get_dentry functions in various places 2005-06-23 09:45:20 -07:00
mount.c [PATCH] sysfs-iattr: set inode attributes 2005-06-20 15:15:37 -07:00
symlink.c [PATCH] sysfs_{create|remove}_link should take const char * 2005-06-20 15:15:00 -07:00
sysfs.h [PATCH] remove duplicate get_dentry functions in various places 2005-06-23 09:45:20 -07:00