From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from mout.kundenserver.de ([212.227.17.13]:60404 "EHLO mout.kundenserver.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030691AbcGKMeF (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Jul 2016 08:34:05 -0400 Message-ID: <57839228.4050102@ontolinux.com> Date: Mon, 11 Jul 2016 14:33:44 +0200 From: Christian Stroetmann MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Gavin Lambert CC: Linux FS Devel Subject: Re: A filesystem without directories References: <000801d1db14$801eb520$805c1f60$@compacsort.com> In-Reply-To: <000801d1db14$801eb520$805c1f60$@compacsort.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: Hello Hardcore Coders, Hello Gavin; Could you please tell us more about your: inspiration, intention, and application, as well as your agenda? Regards Christian Stroetmann > I asked this question on StackOverflow a few days ago but haven't had any > replies. I'm hoping that I'll be more fortunate here. > > http://stackoverflow.com/questions/38219163/providing-a-basic-filesystem-fro > m-a-char-driver > > The short(ish) version is that I have a char driver that (among other > things) can provide named read or write streams from a remote device. > Currently it does this by means of a blocking ioctl that provides the > complete data preloaded into RAM. > > I'm wondering if it's possible to make it provide an fd that can be used > with normal read or write userspace APIs (or even the async APIs), either > through a special ioctl that can return an open fd, or via a "real" > filesystem. > > I'm not really sure how to do the former, and the latter seems problematic > as despite having filenames, there's no concept of a directory -- > specifically, the only way to test whether a given name is valid is to > actually try to open it for read or write; it's not possible to get a list > in advance. (Internally it uses a protocol similar to TFTP.) > > Is this something that VFS can support? And is it possible to use a > non-block-device as a mount source? (There may be multiple instances of the > char device on a given system, so I either need to be able to specify which > one to mount, or it needs to have a shared FS with subdirectories or > something to identify which device to use.) > > > -- > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html >