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Date: Fri, 16 Jun 2006 08:59:12 -0400
From: "Brett Serkez" <bserkez AT gmail DOT com>
To: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: Unable to delete directory in Cygwin
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> >>>NTFS and FAT file systems simply do not have the concept of inodes,
> >>>Cygwin is dependent upon the facilities supplied by these file systems.
> >>
> >>Actually NTFS does have something like an inode.  That's what Cygwin
> >>uses.
> >
> >Then why does this fail?  Please enlighten us?
>
> http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin/2006-06/msg00347.html

This is the same email thread, nothing here that helps explain what
I'm asking.  Rereading it all I see is the reference to open
handles/handlers (Windows/UNIX terminology).  This is precisely what
an inode does in a Linux/UNIX file system, the kernel is given the
inode to hold as the handle to the open file.  If the directory entry
is detached from this inode, no problem, but the file is still open
and exists.  Ultimately the only difference is that UNIX/Linux says no
problem, Windows generates an error due to this difference.

> It has nothing to do with inodes.  There have been versions of UNIX
> which didn't allow you to remove a directory when someone has cd'ed to
> it, too.

Well, the UNIX/Linux rules don't change in this regard, this area has
been stable for as long as I've been using UNIX/Linux (20+ years).
This is one of the great strengths of UNIX, the basic rules are
simple, well understood and stable.  When you cd to a directory, you
are maintaining the directory as a open file.   It is more likely the
specific file system in use does or doesn't support inodes.

ext2/ext3 has been the predominate file system atleast in Linux,
althought there are many choices and ext2/ext3 is an inode based file
system.  I cannot say that all file system available are inode based,
but all the ones I've worked with in the last decade have been.

So this brings me back to my original question, what is it in NTFS
that provides Inode type functionality that Cygwin is leveraging?  The
inode functionality would disassociate a files meta-data from the
directory entry to allow the functionality we've been talking about as
well as hard links.

Thanks!

Brett

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