Re: [PATCH] one of $BIGNUM devfs races

[Alexander Viro]

On 8 Aug 2001, H. Peter Anvin wrote:

> Followup to:  <[e-mail]>
> By author:    Alexander Viro <[e-mail]>
> In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> > 
> > It is not reliable. E.g. on NFS inumbers are not unique - 32 bits is
> > not enough.
> > 
> 
> Unfortunately there is a whole bunch of other things too that rely on
> it, and *HAVE* to rely on it -- (st_dev, st_ino) are defined to
> specify the identity of a file, and if the current types aren't large
> enough we *HAVE* to go to new types.  THERE IS NO OTHER WAY TO TEST
> FOR FILE IDENTITY IN UNIX, and being able to perform such a test is
> vital for many things, including security and hard link detection

Indeed, but it still doesn't help libc5 getcwd(3), which uses 32 bit
values.

> (think tar, cpio, cp -a.)

I'd rather not.  Too bloody depressive... (If you want details - let's
take it off-list).