Re: [PATCH] Use userland-like functions for reading the ACPI table

[Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>]

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 12:45:38PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > 
> > As recommended by Christoph Hellwig, even if we can't rely on the userspace
> > firmware loader so early at boot, at least use normal syscall (as in
> > init/do_mounts_*.c). Similarly, use kfree() instead of ACPI_FREE().
> 
> So I'm missing a lot of the background here.
> 
> I don't think "sys_open()" is in any way preferable to the alternatives, 
> especially since it depends on thread-global state (the file descriptor 
> table) rather than much more local state ("struct file" that you've 
> opened).
> 
> I think the calls to sys_open() in init do_dounts etc are very different: 
> they really are more about a real kernel-level almost-user-mode thread 
> than a core driver. 

Well, that's what this code is like aswell.  That's why I recommended
to Eric to move it to init/ and make it look like that code.  I haven't
quite caught up with the discussion yet, but Eric think moving it
there might not be a that good idea.  Having this code in drivers/
even if it's just called in init time is a bad idea, as people will
copy it.  Then again using the functions the code was using before
isn't any better.