Bug 698333

Summary: Review Request: cowdancer - Tool for limited copy-on-write directory tree access
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Jan Vcelak <jvcelak>
Component: Package ReviewAssignee: Nobody's working on this, feel free to take it <nobody>
Status: CLOSED WONTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: rawhideCC: fedora-package-review, kevin, notting, tsmetana, volker27
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Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2011-05-19 14:22:10 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Jan Vcelak 2011-04-20 16:50:00 UTC
Spec URL: http://jvcelak.fedorapeople.org/cowdancer/cowdancer.spec
SRPM URL: http://jvcelak.fedorapeople.org/cowdancer/src/cowdancer-0.16-1.fc15.src.rpm
x86_64 build: http://jvcelak.fedorapeople.org/cowdancer/x86_64/
i686 build: http://jvcelak.fedorapeople.org/cowdancer/i686/

Description:

Cowdancer provides limited copy-on-write file access on hard-link copied
directory trees ('cp -al'). The cowdancer session is started with 'cow-shell'
command. Within that session, cowdancer will create a new file when existing
inode is opened for a write operation. The list of protected inodes is
generated on session start from directory tree where 'cow-shell' was invoked.
Tool is completely implemented in userspace and uses LD_PRELOAD technique.

Limitations:
- support for chmod/chown is not reliable
- requires filesystem supporting hard-links
- operation is not semantically correct when files are originally hard-linked
- if chroot is needed, has to be started from inside of it
- is silent and does nothing when LD_PRELOAD breaks


rpmlint reports only spelling-error which are fine

$ rpmlint ./cowdancer.spec 
0 packages and 1 specfiles checked; 0 errors, 0 warnings.

$ rpmlint ./cowdancer-0.16-1.fc15.src.rpm 
cowdancer.src: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US inode -> node, anode, i node
cowdancer.src: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US inodes -> nodes, anodes, i nodes
cowdancer.src: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US userspace -> user space, user-space, users pace
cowdancer.src: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US chmod -> ch mod, ch-mod, chm od
cowdancer.src: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US chown -> sown, chow, chon
cowdancer.src: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US filesystem -> file system, file-system, systematic
cowdancer.src: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US chroot -> cheroot, ch root, ch-root
1 packages and 0 specfiles checked; 0 errors, 7 warnings.

$ rpmlint ./cowdancer-0.16-1.fc15.i686.rpm 
cowdancer.i686: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US inode -> node, anode, i node
cowdancer.i686: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US inodes -> nodes, anodes, i nodes
cowdancer.i686: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US userspace -> user space, user-space, users pace
cowdancer.i686: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US chmod -> ch mod, ch-mod, chm od
cowdancer.i686: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US chown -> sown, chow, chon
cowdancer.i686: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US filesystem -> file system, file-system, systematic
cowdancer.i686: W: spelling-error %description -l en_US chroot -> cheroot, ch root, ch-root
1 packages and 0 specfiles checked; 0 errors, 7 warnings.

Comment 1 Volker Fröhlich 2011-05-07 14:31:43 UTC
Are you aware there were no updates in 5 years?

Comment 2 Kevin Kofler 2011-05-09 18:03:59 UTC
Are you aware of http://blog.tridgell.net/?p=141 too?

Comment 3 Jan Vcelak 2011-05-19 14:22:10 UTC
I agree. I needed this for one project, but I would rather take a look at something else. Thank you, guys.