Filesystem change notifications

[Ian Pilcher]

Is anyone working on implementing FindFirstChangeNotification and
friends?  If not, this looks like something that may be both within my
capabilities and non-trivial enough to be useful (a rare combination!).

My thought is to use SGI FAM (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/), which
is shipped with Red Hat and (according to bug #588) Mandrake.  I'm not
sure about any other distributions, but the FAQ on the web page states
that Enlightenment, GNOME, and KDE all use it, so it should be pretty
widespread.

If no one is working on this, start preparing for an endless series of
questions about the wineserver's internal workings.

[Ian Pilcher]

Keith Matthews wrote:
> On Wed, 13 Nov 2002 18:53:42 -0600
> "Ian Pilcher"  wrote:
> > My thought is to use SGI FAM (http://oss.sgi.com/projects/fam/), which
> > is shipped with Red Hat and (according to bug #588) Mandrake.  I'm not
> > sure about any other distributions, but the FAQ on the web page states
> > that Enlightenment, GNOME, and KDE all use it, so it should be pretty
> > widespread.
>
> It sems to have been dropped in RH 7.3 which is a good thing.

I just checked my 7.3 filesystem.  It's there, and it's definitely
shipped with 8.0.
> Fam requires portmapper. If not set up properly (i.e. by someone who
> understands what they are letting loose) portmapper can be a serious
> security problem. The security community regard the introduction of fam
> a serious backward step on RH's part.
>
> KDE etc might use it but they do not _need_ it.
>
> You are also assuming that every distro follows RH's lead which is very
> definitely not true. Many people are already getting upset about the
> number of libraries that are required to get some packages to run.
> GNUCash being a prime example of package use gone mad.

Can you suggest a superior alternative?

I don't want to get into a flamewar over the merits of your criticisms
(what does Red Hat have to do with the libraries required by GnuCash?),
but doing something -- albeit imperfect -- seems better than doing
nothing.

BTW, I don't plan to introduce a hard dependency, if that's what you're
worried about.

[Joerg Mayer]

On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 01:53:46AM -0600, Ian Pilcher wrote:
> but doing something -- albeit imperfect -- seems better than doing
> nothing.

This statement is true in many cases, but it is dead wrong when security
comes into play.

Ciao
            Jörg

--
Joerg Mayer                                          
I found out that "pro" means "instead of" (as in proconsul). Now I know
what proactive means.

[Marcus Meissner]

> > Fam requires portmapper. If not set up properly (i.e. by someone who
> > understands what they are letting loose) portmapper can be a serious
> > security problem. The security community regard the introduction of fam
> > a serious backward step on RH's part.
> >
> > KDE etc might use it but they do not _need_ it.
> >
> > You are also assuming that every distro follows RH's lead which is very
> > definitely not true. Many people are already getting upset about the
> > number of libraries that are required to get some packages to run.
> > GNUCash being a prime example of package use gone mad.
>
> Can you suggest a superior alternative?

Check up on directory notifications in Linux. A way cool thing.

- catch SIGIO ...
- fcntl(fd, F_NOTIFY, DN_xxx|DN_yyy);

Ciao, Marcus

[Ian Pilcher]

Marcus Meissner wrote:
> Check up on directory notifications in Linux. A way cool thing.
> - catch SIGIO ...
> - fcntl(fd, F_NOTIFY, DN_xxx|DN_yyy);

In fact, I've just been looking at them.  Way cool indeed, except that
they're Linux-only.