[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>

1 files changed, 138 insertions, 0 deletions

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+				    inotify
+	     a powerful yet simple file change notification system
+
+
+
+Document started 15 Mar 2005 by Robert Love <rml@novell.com>
+
+(i) User Interface
+
+Inotify is controlled by a set of three sys calls 
+
+First step in using inotify is to initialise an inotify instance
+
+	int fd = inotify_init ();
+
+Change events are managed by "watches".  A watch is an (object,mask) pair where
+the object is a file or directory and the mask is a bit mask of one or more
+inotify events that the application wishes to receive.  See <linux/inotify.h>
+for valid events.  A watch is referenced by a watch descriptor, or wd.
+
+Watches are added via a path to the file.
+
+Watches on a directory will return events on any files inside of the directory.
+
+Adding a watch is simple,
+
+	int wd = inotify_add_watch (fd, path, mask);
+
+You can add a large number of files via something like
+
+	for each file to watch {
+		int wd = inotify_add_watch (fd, file, mask);
+	}
+
+You can update an existing watch in the same manner, by passing in a new mask.
+
+An existing watch is removed via the INOTIFY_IGNORE ioctl, for example
+
+	inotify_rm_watch (fd, wd);
+
+Events are provided in the form of an inotify_event structure that is read(2)
+from a inotify instance fd.  The filename is of dynamic length and follows the 
+struct. It is of size len.  The filename is padded with null bytes to ensure 
+proper alignment.  This padding is reflected in len.
+
+You can slurp multiple events by passing a large buffer, for example
+
+	size_t len = read (fd, buf, BUF_LEN);
+
+Will return as many events as are available and fit in BUF_LEN.
+
+each inotify instance fd is also select()- and poll()-able.
+
+You can find the size of the current event queue via the FIONREAD ioctl.
+
+All watches are destroyed and cleaned up on close.
+
+
+(ii) Internal Kernel Implementation
+
+Each open inotify instance is associated with an inotify_device structure.
+
+Each watch is associated with an inotify_watch structure.  Watches are chained
+off of each associated device and each associated inode.
+
+See fs/inotify.c for the locking and lifetime rules.
+
+
+(iii) Rationale
+
+Q: What is the design decision behind not tying the watch to the open fd of
+   the watched object?
+
+A: Watches are associated with an open inotify device, not an open file.
+   This solves the primary problem with dnotify: keeping the file open pins
+   the file and thus, worse, pins the mount.  Dnotify is therefore infeasible
+   for use on a desktop system with removable media as the media cannot be
+   unmounted.
+
+Q: What is the design decision behind using an-fd-per-device as opposed to
+   an fd-per-watch?
+
+A: An fd-per-watch quickly consumes more file descriptors than are allowed,
+   more fd's than are feasible to manage, and more fd's than are optimally
+   select()-able.  Yes, root can bump the per-process fd limit and yes, users
+   can use epoll, but requiring both is a silly and extraneous requirement.
+   A watch consumes less memory than an open file, separating the number
+   spaces is thus sensible.  The current design is what user-space developers
+   want: Users initialize inotify, once, and add n watches, requiring but one fd
+   and no twiddling with fd limits.  Initializing an inotify instance two
+   thousand times is silly.  If we can implement user-space's preferences 
+   cleanly--and we can, the idr layer makes stuff like this trivial--then we 
+   should.
+
+   There are other good arguments.  With a single fd, there is a single
+   item to block on, which is mapped to a single queue of events.  The single
+   fd returns all watch events and also any potential out-of-band data.  If
+   every fd was a separate watch,
+
+   - There would be no way to get event ordering.  Events on file foo and
+     file bar would pop poll() on both fd's, but there would be no way to tell
+     which happened first.  A single queue trivially gives you ordering.  Such
+     ordering is crucial to existing applications such as Beagle.  Imagine
+     "mv a b ; mv b a" events without ordering.
+
+   - We'd have to maintain n fd's and n internal queues with state,
+     versus just one.  It is a lot messier in the kernel.  A single, linear
+     queue is the data structure that makes sense.
+
+   - User-space developers prefer the current API.  The Beagle guys, for
+     example, love it.  Trust me, I asked.  It is not a surprise: Who'd want
+     to manage and block on 1000 fd's via select?
+
+   - You'd have to manage the fd's, as an example: Call close() when you
+     received a delete event.
+
+   - No way to get out of band data.
+
+   - 1024 is still too low.  ;-)
+
+   When you talk about designing a file change notification system that
+   scales to 1000s of directories, juggling 1000s of fd's just does not seem
+   the right interface.  It is too heavy.
+
+Q: Why the system call approach?
+
+A: The poor user-space interface is the second biggest problem with dnotify.
+   Signals are a terrible, terrible interface for file notification.  Or for
+   anything, for that matter.  The ideal solution, from all perspectives, is a
+   file descriptor-based one that allows basic file I/O and poll/select.
+   Obtaining the fd and managing the watches could have been done either via a
+   device file or a family of new system calls.  We decided to implement a
+   family of system calls because that is the preffered approach for new kernel
+   features and it means our user interface requirements.
+
+   Additionally, it _is_ possible to  more than one instance  and
+   juggle more than one queue and thus more than one associated fd.
+