vfs interface - ioctl question

[Anu Engineer]

Hi ,

I have been looking at the SAMBA VFS layer, and I have a request 
for a function to be added to the interface.

I would like to propose an ioctl like function where file system defined
parameters can be passed back and forth between SAMBA and physical
file-system. 

This will be useful in cases where the file system supports some
features over and above ordinary Unix file systems. For example,
Creation Time, if we have an ioctl call we can use that to set and get
creation time on files with minimum modification to samba.

I propose something of the form

int 
vfs_ioctl( struct connection_struct * conn, struct files_struct * fsp,
...);

or something like 

int 
vfs_ioctl ( struct connection_struct * conn, struct files_struct * fsp,
ulong cmd, void * inbuf,size_t in_size,  void* outbuf, size_t out_size).



of course I realize the nightmare of maintaining an IOCTL list, but I am
hoping in the case of SAMBA it would not be as bad as something like an
OS, and  this feature will be used to add extensions to SAMBA so that
the capabilities of underlying file systems can be reflected more
accurately in SAMBA.




regards
Anu