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authorRobert Love <rml@novell.com>2005-07-12 17:06:03 -0400
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@g5.osdl.org>2005-07-12 20:38:38 -0700
commit0eeca28300df110bd6ed54b31193c83b87921443 (patch)
tree7db42d8a18d80eca538f5b7d25e0532b8fa38b85 /fs/Kconfig
parentbd4c625c061c2a38568d0add3478f59172455159 (diff)
[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/Kconfig13
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