Whiteout isn't actually a new file type, but is represented as a char
device (Linus's idea) with 0/0 device number.
This has several advantages compared to introducing a new whiteout file
type:
- no userspace API changes (e.g. trivial to make backups of upper layer
filesystem, without losing whiteouts)
- no fs image format changes (you can boot an old kernel/fsck without
whiteout support and things won't break)
- implementation is trivial
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi <mszeredi@suse.cz>
787fb6bc96