On Wed, 7 Mar 2007, Eric Dumazet wrote: > > sockets already uses file->private_data. > > But calls to read()/write() (not send()/recv()) still need to go through the > dentry, before entering socket land.
Sure. The dentry and the inode need to *exist*, but they can be one single static dentry/inode per "file descriptor type". We always pass in the "struct file *" to read/write too, since we need it anyway for things like file control information (eg "is it a nonblocking read or write" kinds of things). So I'm not suggesting a NULL dentry/inode, I'm suggesting a single static one per type. And yeah, it may be harder than it looks. Some things "know" that all the relevant info is in the inode, so they just pass in the inode. In the pipe layer, for example, you'd need to change free_pipe_info() and alloc_pipe_info() to pass in the file descriptor instead, same goes for pipe_release(). But the "struct file *" is always available, it's just that since the code was originally written to have all the info in the inode, some of the code isn't set up to use it or pass it on.. But your patch is independent of that, and looks fine. Except I don't like this part: - file->f_path.mnt = mntget(sock_mnt); + file->f_path.mnt = NULL; since I'd be much happer with always having f_path.mnt available, the same way we should always have f_path.dentry there. (Btw, your patch is *not* going to work with the file->f_private_data approach, because d_path() is not passed down the "file *" thing. So we'd need to do that, and that's more intrusive (it can be NULL, since for things like cwd/pwd we don't have a "struct file"). But I like your patch as a totally independent thing. "It just makes sense". (Apart from the f_path.mnt thing, which I think was something else ;) Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/