Re: [GIT PATCH] TTY/serial merge for .38

[Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de>]

On Fri, Jan 07, 2011 at 12:54:05AM +0100, Kay Sievers wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 6, 2011 at 23:24, Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de> wrote:
> > On Thu, Jan 06, 2011 at 10:00:17PM +0000, Alan Cox wrote:
> >> > There was some arguing about the tty console detection patches, but as
> >> > the existing ioctl does not work properly, Kay's patch was accepted to
> >> > resolve this issue and allow systemd to correctly detect consoles.  I
> >> > know Alan doesn't like this, but I feel it's the best way to solve the
> >> > issue (combined with the fact that there is no proposed other solution.)
> >>
> >> I'm a bit confused about this one Greg - all the distributions used the
> >> ioctl you refer to below for this purpose and have for years
> >>
> >> > This series also includes the long-out-of-tree ioctl that SUSE and
> >> > Debian have been dragging around in their kernels for the past 10+
> >> > years.  Thanks to Werner for finally submitting it in a mergable form.
> >>
> >> Which I believe means we don't need the sysfs patch as well - Kay ?
> >
> > I didn't think that the ioctl was sufficient for what systemd required,
> > it was only needed for "old-style" initrd programs like what used to be
> > used in SUSE and other distros, but are now being phased out.
> 
> We want all involved ttys below /dev/console not only the primary one.
> Also we like to get notified about re-configs, hence the poll()
> support. Both is not covered at the moment, or by the old, now to be
> merged, ioctl.

Ah, ok, that makes sense, and is why I merged both, they are both needed
by different users (well, the ioctl users could use the sysfs file, but
as it has been used for 10+ years, it's only fair to include it as well
to provide backward compatiblity to those users).

thanks,

greg k-h