Re: Synchronous signal delivery..

Linus Torvalds
2003-02-15T01:02:17Z

On Sat, 15 Feb 2003, Matti Aarnio wrote:
>
> Somehow all this idea has a feeling of long established
> Linux kernel facility called: netlink

Several people have said that, and it's completely NOT TRUE.

The thing about sigfd() has _nothing_ to do with sending packets, and
everything to do with the fact that you _associate_ signals with the thing
that you get the packets from.

Sure, the code could associate signals with a netlink fd instead. But
netlink is not actually a very good abstraction in my opinion - it has
another layer of code (the network layer) between it and the user, which
dos not add any value.

> Do we need new syscall(s) ? Could it all be done with netlink ?

We'd need the same new system call - the one to associate signals of this
process with the netlink thing.

(Yeah, the "system call" could be an ioctl entry, but quite frankly,
that's much WORSE than adding a system call. It's just system calls
without type checking).

Linus