Subject: Re: Removing tmpfs' experimental status
To: Julio M. Merino Vidal <jmmv84@gmail.com>
From: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
List: tech-kern
Date: 10/22/2006 10:57:58
On Sun, 22 Oct 2006 15:59:41 +0200, "Julio M. Merino Vidal"
<jmmv84@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> [ please CC me any replies ]
>
> Several people have suggested to remove the experimental status from
> tmpfs so that we can enable it by default in our kernels (not in
> sysinst, though). I think it was martin@ who said that this would be
> fine but that we first should disable obviously broken functionality
> (read NFS support). That seems wise advice so...
>
> Unless there are serious objections, I'll do this soon so that it can
> get into 4.0:
> - Change all kernel configurations to remove the 'experimental' status
> from the TMPFS line.
> - Enable TMPFS by default on all GENERIC kernels.
> - Disable the tmpfs_vfstofh and tmpfs_fhtovfs vfsops so that tmpfs
> does not support exporting. (I'm making them optional through a
> TMPFS_ENABLE_NFS macro so that people interested in fixing it can
> quickly enable the missing bits. Of course the macro will go away
> when things work as expected.)
> - Add some notes in mount_tmpfs(8) BUGS section to explain this as
> well as some other missing features.
As discussed a few months ago, it also has problems with openoffice --
openoffice can't read tmpfs directories to let you browse them.
--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb