From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1753007AbZIPK3A (ORCPT ); Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:29:00 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750830AbZIPK27 (ORCPT ); Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:28:59 -0400 Received: from mga05.intel.com ([192.55.52.89]:28784 "EHLO fmsmga101.fm.intel.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-FAIL) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750801AbZIPK26 (ORCPT ); Wed, 16 Sep 2009 06:28:58 -0400 X-ExtLoop1: 1 X-IronPort-AV: E=Sophos;i="4.44,396,1249282800"; d="scan'208";a="727424061" Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:23:32 +0100 From: Alan Cox To: Anthony Liguori Cc: Amit Shah , rusty@rustcorp.com.au, virtualization@lists.linux-foundation.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [PATCH] virtio_console: Add support for multiple ports for generic guest and host communication Message-ID: <20090916112332.6bf981a5@linux.intel.com> In-Reply-To: <4AAA8A56.3040707@codemonkey.ws> References: <1252678386-17404-1-git-send-email-amit.shah@redhat.com> <1252678386-17404-2-git-send-email-amit.shah@redhat.com> <20090911170010.34c80f2d@linux.intel.com> <20090911163806.GB25535@amit-x200.redhat.com> <4AAA8838.1080106@codemonkey.ws> <20090911173307.GB27046@amit-x200.redhat.com> <4AAA8A56.3040707@codemonkey.ws> Organization: Intel X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.2 (GTK+ 2.16.5; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > This device is very much a serial port. I don't see any reason not > to treat it like one. Here are a few - You don't need POSIX multi-open semantics, hangup and the like - Seek makes sense on some kinds of fixed attributes - TTY has a relatively large memory overhead per device - Sysfs is what everything else uses - Sysfs has some rather complete lifetime management you'll need to redo by hand - You don't need idiotic games with numbering spaces Abusing tty for this is ridiculous. In some ways putting much of it in kernel is ridiculous too as you can do it with a FUSE fs or simply export the info guest-guest using SNMP. Alan