vfs: add whiteout support

Whiteout isn't actually a new file type, but is represented as a char
device (Linus's idea) with 0/0 device number.

This has several advantages compared to introducing a new whiteout file
type:

 - no userspace API changes (e.g. trivial to make backups of upper layer
   filesystem, without losing whiteouts)

 - no fs image format changes (you can boot an old kernel/fsck without
   whiteout support and things won't break)

 - implementation is trivial

Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>

1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/include/linux/fs.h b/include/linux/fs.h
index 55cc0a319baa..69118b3cb917 100644
--- a/include/linux/fs.h
+++ b/include/linux/fs.h
@@ -223,6 +223,13 @@ typedef void (dio_iodone_t)(struct kiocb *iocb, loff_t offset,
 #define ATTR_TIMES_SET  (1 << 16)
 
 /*
+ * Whiteout is represented by a char device.  The following constants define the
+ * mode and device number to use.
+ */
+#define WHITEOUT_MODE 0
+#define WHITEOUT_DEV 0
+
+/*
  * This is the Inode Attributes structure, used for notify_change().  It
  * uses the above definitions as flags, to know which values have changed.
  * Also, in this manner, a Filesystem can look at only the values it cares
@@ -1398,6 +1405,7 @@ extern int vfs_link(struct dentry *, struct inode *, struct dentry *, struct ino
 extern int vfs_rmdir(struct inode *, struct dentry *);
 extern int vfs_unlink(struct inode *, struct dentry *, struct inode **);
 extern int vfs_rename(struct inode *, struct dentry *, struct inode *, struct dentry *, struct inode **, unsigned int);
+extern int vfs_whiteout(struct inode *, struct dentry *);
 
 /*
  * VFS dentry helper functions.
@@ -1628,6 +1636,9 @@ struct super_operations {
 #define IS_AUTOMOUNT(inode)     ((inode)->i_flags & S_AUTOMOUNT)
 #define IS_NOSEC(inode)         ((inode)->i_flags & S_NOSEC)
 
+#define IS_WHITEOUT(inode)      (S_ISCHR(inode->i_mode) && \
+                                 (inode)->i_rdev == WHITEOUT_DEV)
+
 /*
  * Inode state bits.  Protected by inode->i_lock
  *