nfs: document nfsv4 sillyrename issues

Commit Message

J. Bruce Fields July 15, 2011, 11:09 p.m. UTC

From: J. Bruce Fields <[e-mail]>

Somebody working on this code asked what the deal was with NFSv4, since
this comment notes that it's v2/v3's statelessness that requires
sillyrename.  Shouldn't hurt to document the answer.

Signed-off-by: J. Bruce Fields <[e-mail]>
---
 fs/nfs/unlink.c |    8 ++++++++
 1 files changed, 8 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

Patch

diff --git a/fs/nfs/unlink.c b/fs/nfs/unlink.c
index 8d6864c..981298c 100644
--- a/fs/nfs/unlink.c
+++ b/fs/nfs/unlink.c
@@ -501,6 +501,14 @@  nfs_async_rename(struct inode *old_dir, struct inode *new_dir,
  * and only performs the unlink once the last reference to it is put.
  *
  * The final cleanup is done during dentry_iput.
+ *
+ * (Note: NFSv4 is stateful, and has opens, so in theory an NFSv4 server
+ * could take responsibility for keeping open files referenced.  The server
+ * would also need to ensure that opened-but-deleted files were kept over
+ * reboots.  However, we may not assume a server does so.  (RFC 5661
+ * does provide an OPEN4_RESULT_PRESERVE_UNLINKED flag that a server can
+ * use to advertise that it does this; some day we may take advantage of
+ * it.))
  */
 int
 nfs_sillyrename(struct inode *dir, struct dentry *dentry)