After all it is now much more like strjoin() than strappend(). At the
same time, add support for NULL sentinels, even if they are normally not
necessary.
Given that this is also the place to store raw disk images which are
very much bootable with qemu/kvm it sounds like a misnomer to call the
directory "container". Hence, let's change this sooner rather than
later, and use the generic name, in particular since we otherwise try to
use the generic "machine" preferably over the more specific "container"
or "vm".
After all, nspawn can now dissect MBR partition levels, too, hence
".gpt" appears a misnomer. Moreover, the the .raw suffix for these files
is already pretty popular (the Fedora disk images use it for example),
hence sounds like an OK scheme to adopt.
This adds three kinds of file system locks for container images:
a) a file system lock next to the actual image, in a .lck file in the
same directory the image is located. This lock has the benefit of
usually being located on the same NFS share as the image itself, and
thus allows locking container images across NFS shares.
b) a file system lock in /run, named after st_dev and st_ino of the
root of the image. This lock has the advantage that it is unique even
if the same image is bind mounted to two different places at the same
time, as the ino/dev stays constant for them.
c) a file system lock that is only taken when a new disk image is about
to be created, that ensures that checking whether the name is already
used across the search path, and actually placing the image is not
interrupted by other code taking the name.
a + b are read-write locks. When a container is booted in read-only mode
a read lock is taken, otherwise a write lock.
Lock b is always taken after a, to avoid ABBA problems.
Lock c is mostly relevant when renaming or cloning images.
Lennart Poettering