Re: F_CTRLFD (was Re: Why side-effects on open(2) are evil.)

Alexander Viro
2001-05-20T19:30:38Z

On Sun, 20 May 2001, Edgar Toernig wrote:

> IMHO any similar powerful (and versatile) interface will see the same
> problems. Enforcing a read/write like interface (and rejecting drivers
> that pass ptrs through this interface) may give you some knowledge about
> the kernel/userspace communication. But the data the flows around will
> become the same mess that is present with the current ioctl. Every driver
> invents its own sets of commands, its own rules of argument parsing, ...
> Maybe it's no longer strange binary data but readable ASCII strings but
> that's all. Look at how many different "styles" of /proc files there are.

Too many people who don't know C and manage to get their crap into the
tree. Shame, but that is _not_ a technical problem.

> IMHO what's needed is a definition for "sane" in this context. Trying
> to limit the kind of actions performed by ioctls is not "sane". Then
> people will always revert back to old ioctl. "Sane" could be: network
> transparent, architecture independant, usable with generic tools and non
> C-like languages.

/me points to UNIX-like OS that had done that. BTW, network-transparent means
"no pointers"...