[ switching mail address, as I believe the list is subscriber-only ] On Wed, 23 Mar 2005 11:54:31 -0500, Timothy Miller wrote: > We should put this back on-list, since what you say is informative. [...] > My objection to using something other than ioctl is that I was under > the impression that it was the best thing designed for the use we were > discussing. You point out, however, that Linux kernel developers have > specifically designed another mechanism for that purpose. If so, and > it's an efficient mechanism, that is what we should use.
I do _not_ claim netlink is the thing to use. I am merely pointing out that Linux does have a socket-based userland-kernel interface (and so does BSD, if memory serves): netlink. That interface is used for async communication and was meant to replace ioctls at least for some cases. Also, there's some consensus on LKML that ioctls are evil and only a last resort. For those who don't know netlink: IIRC it was initially designed for setting up routing tables and friends. It is now also used for other purposes, for instance as a transport for event signalling (e.g. auditing messages, file change notification). I have written a machine-readable, scalable interface that offers the same information as procfs via netlink. The problem with netlink is hardly overhead but that the interface is somewhat documentation-challenged. Again, I make no claims about the suitability of netlink for this purpose. However, the argument that sockets must only ever be used for inter-user communication holds no water. Roger _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
