Re: Bug#369822: ls -i stats unnecessarily

[Ian Jackson]

Ian Jackson writes ("Re: Bug#369822: ls -i stats unnecessarily"):
> There are I think two approaches to this problem:
>  * find a list of mountpoints in some system-specific way
>    for each one stat mountpoint/..
>    compare device and inode with those of the directory we're readdir'ing
>  * provide an option to allow the user to specify that they don't
>    mind the inode numbers of mountpoints being wrong

Someone has just pointed out to me that no matter what you do, you
don't get the dev for the covering filesystem.  So returning the inum
of the root of the covering fs is definitely wrong and should never be
done.

Think about it: if you ls -i anywhere near a mount point you're
_inevitably_ going to get useless data because the output doesn't
contain devs.  So anyone who does ls -i usefully must know that there
are no mountpoints and this whole issue can be ignored.

Ian.