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| author | Robert Love <rml@novell.com> | 2005-07-12 17:06:03 -0400 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Linus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org> | 2005-07-12 20:38:38 -0700 |
| commit | 0eeca28300df110bd6ed54b31193c83b87921443 (patch) | |
| tree | 7db42d8a18d80eca538f5b7d25e0532b8fa38b85 /fs/Kconfig | |
| parent | bd4c625c061c2a38568d0add3478f59172455159 (diff) | |
| download | lwn-0eeca28300df110bd6ed54b31193c83b87921443.tar.gz lwn-0eeca28300df110bd6ed54b31193c83b87921443.zip | |
[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>
Diffstat (limited to 'fs/Kconfig')
| -rw-r--r-- | fs/Kconfig | 13 |
1 files changed, 13 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/fs/Kconfig b/fs/Kconfig index f93fd41b025d..5d0c4be43dba 100644 --- a/fs/Kconfig +++ b/fs/Kconfig @@ -359,6 +359,19 @@ config ROMFS_FS If you don't know whether you need it, then you don't need it: answer N. +config INOTIFY + bool "Inotify file change notification support" + default y + ---help--- + Say Y here to enable inotify support and the /dev/inotify character + device. Inotify is a file change notification system and a + replacement for dnotify. Inotify fixes numerous shortcomings in + dnotify and introduces several new features. It allows monitoring + of both files and directories via a single open fd. Multiple file + events are supported. + + If unsure, say Y. + config QUOTA bool "Quota support" help |