ovl: introduce the inodes index dir feature

Create the index dir on mount. The index dir will contain hardlinks to
upper inodes, named after the hex representation of their origin lower
inodes.

The index dir is going to be used to prevent breaking lower hardlinks
on copy up and to implement overlayfs NFS export.

Because the feature is not fully backward compat, enabling the feature
is opt-in by config/module/mount option.

Signed-off-by: Amir Goldstein <amir73il@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@redhat.com>

1 files changed, 20 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/fs/overlayfs/Kconfig b/fs/overlayfs/Kconfig
index c0c9683934b7..cbfc196e5dc5 100644
--- a/fs/overlayfs/Kconfig
+++ b/fs/overlayfs/Kconfig
@@ -23,3 +23,23 @@ config OVERLAY_FS_REDIRECT_DIR
 	  Note, that redirects are not backward compatible.  That is, mounting
 	  an overlay which has redirects on a kernel that doesn't support this
 	  feature will have unexpected results.
+
+config OVERLAY_FS_INDEX
+	bool "Overlayfs: turn on inodes index feature by default"
+	depends on OVERLAY_FS
+	help
+	  If this config option is enabled then overlay filesystems will use
+	  the inodes index dir to map lower inodes to upper inodes by default.
+	  In this case it is still possible to turn off index globally with the
+	  "index=off" module option or on a filesystem instance basis with the
+	  "index=off" mount option.
+
+	  The inodes index feature prevents breaking of lower hardlinks on copy
+	  up.
+
+	  Note, that the inodes index feature is read-only backward compatible.
+	  That is, mounting an overlay which has an index dir on a kernel that
+	  doesn't support this feature read-only, will not have any negative
+	  outcomes.  However, mounting the same overlay with an old kernel
+	  read-write and then mounting it again with a new kernel, will have
+	  unexpected results.