[Ocfs2-devel] [PATCH 1/3] fs: Document the reflink(2) system call.

[James Morris]

On Tue, 5 May 2009, Theodore Tso wrote:

> The bigger questions, which we really need to answer are:
> 
> 1) If someone other than the owner of a file uses reflink to "make a
> copy" of the file, is it new inode, with the new inode number, owned
> by the original owner (making it look more like a link), or owned by
> the person creating the reflink (making it look more like a copy).

Changing the owner fundamentally changes the character of the call 
(certainly, the SELinux security logic would be quite different), and I 
think application writers would often be asking "what type of reflink call 
am I supposed to be using here?", and possibly getting it wrong much of 
the time.  It might be better to create a separate syscall for the copy 
case, with its own distinct semantics, if it is desired.


- James
-- 
James Morris
<jmorris at namei.org>