>>>>>> "David" == David Masover <ninja@slaphack.com> writes:

David>> File-as-a-dir has numerous advantages, but enough have been
David>> discussed.  Short list is image mounts, tarballs, streams,
David>> metas, and namespace unification.  Longer list and explanations
David>> can be found if you RTFA.

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> And it has numerous dis-advantages as well, since it doesn't have a
> good set of semantics and syntax defined yet, nor does it explain
> except by vigorous handwaving the performance and security impacts it
> can have.

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> My personal feeling is that the mount(8) command should be the tool
> used to extract and expose the internal namespace of files like this
> and to then graft it onto the standard Unix namespace with gross Unix
> semantics, but it's own wacky internal semantics.  This way, standard
> tools don't care, but special tools which know how to handle it can do
> what they want.


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>> mount -t tarfs /some/place/on/disk/foo.tar.gz /mnt/tar
>> cp /var/tmp/img.gif .
>> umount /mnt/tar

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> Oops!  Someone did a rm /some/place/on/disk/foo.tar.gz between steps
> one and two.  Now what happens?  Please define those semantics...

  Uhm, can you delete a file (loop) that is mounted?

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> John