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Aufs pseudo-link (plink) represents a virtual hardlink across the
branches. To implement the plink maintenance mode, aufs uses procfs.
See also the document in this commit.

There is an external user-space utility called 'auplink' in
aufs-util.git, which has these features.
- 'list' shows the pseudo-linked inode numbers and filenames.
- 'cpup' copies-up all pseudo-link to the writable branch.
- 'flush' calls 'cpup', and then 'mount -o remount,clean_plink=inum'
Signed-off-by: J. R. Okajima <hooanon05g@gmail.com>

As mentioned earlier, sometimes the size of XINO file is a problem.
Aufs has a feature to truncate it asynchronously using workqueue. But it
may not be so effective in some cases, and you may want to stop
discontiguous distribution of the inode numbers on branch fs.
See also the log in another commit.
Signed-off-by: J. R. Okajima <hooanon05g@gmail.com>

XINO and XIB files are read and written frequently after unlinked, and
it means that the remote filesystems are not suitable for them.
Additionally aufs shows their metadata via debugfs (in later commit).
To make it easier to do this, aufs expects branch filesystems to
maintain their i_size and i_blocks. And it means some filesystem are not
suitable for XINO.
Signed-off-by: J. R. Okajima <hooanon05g@gmail.com>

XINO and XIB files are to maintain the inode numbers in aufs
(cf. struct.txt and aufs manual in aufs-util.git).

XINO file contains just a sequence of the inode numbers, and their
offset in the file is real_inum x sizeof(inum).  So the size is limited
by s_maxbytes of the filesystem where XINO file is located.  In order to
support the larger inum, aufs stores XINO files as an internal array.

Sometimes the size of XINO file can be a problem, ie. too big,
particularly when XINO files are located on tmpfs. In this case, another
separate patch tmpfs-ino.patch in aufs4-standalone.git is recommended
(as well as vfs-ino.patch). The patch makes tmpfs to maintain inode
number within itself and suppress its discontiguous distribution.

See also the document in next commit.
Signed-off-by: J. R. Okajima <hooanon05g@gmail.com>

For details, see previous commit.
Signed-off-by: J. R. Okajima <hooanon05g@gmail.com>

The branch object is managed by the sbinfo object as an element of its
internal array. The iinfo and dinfo objects contain the branch id, and
it will be used to implement the correct order in branch management
(add/del).

See also the documents in this commit.
Signed-off-by: J. R. Okajima <hooanon05g@gmail.com>