Re: async-io API registration for 2.5.29

Christoph Hellwig
2002-07-30T08:08:18Z

On Tue, Jul 30, 2002 at 07:41:11AM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> I find the dynamic syscall approch in some vendor kernel out there
> that implements a /proc/libredhat unacceptable since it's not forward
> compatible with 2.5:

What is /proc/libredhat supposed to be? It hasn't ever been part of the
AIO patches.

> ). So I would ask if you could merge the below interface into 2.5 so we can
> ship a real async-io with real syscalls in 2.4, there's not much time to
> change it given this is just used in production userspace today. I
> prepared a patch against 2.5.29. Ben, I would appreciate if you could
> review and confirm you're fine with it too.

Please don't. First Ben has indicated on kernel summit that the abi might
change and I think it's a bad idea to lock him into the old ABI just because
suse doesn't want to have something called libredhat.so* in /lib.
Alternate suggestion: rename it to libunited.so.

And even if there is a syscall reservation the way to do it is not to add
the real syscall names to entry.S and implement stubs but to use
sys_ni_syscall.

> BTW, I'm not the author of the API, and personally I dislike the
> sys_io_sumbit approch, the worst part is the multiplexing of course:

Okay. So you think the API is stupid but want it to get in without
discussion??

If you really want to ship the old-style AIO (of which I remember ben
saying it it broken for everything post-2.4.9) please stick to the patch
Ben has around, otherwise wait for the proper 2.5 solution. I have my
doubts that it is backportable, though.