Re: bitkeeper / IDE cleanup

[Martin Dalecki <dalecki@evision-ventures.com>]

Alan Cox wrote:
>>3. Why do we have something like genric cdrom ioctl handling layer,
>>    which is basically just adding the above hooks?
>
> That bit is needed. You want unpriviledged processes to issue a subset of
> the available commands so users can do things like play music. Those ioctls
> for CDROM are also rather important for back compatibility.
> 
> Thats a seperate but important case.
> 
> There are two things I think you must consider
> 
> #1	"Make the simple things easy" - abstract common cd interface and
> 	friends. Unpriviledged but with strict limits on what can be issued
> 
> #2	"Make the hard possible" - the direct "I know what I am doing"
> 	CAP_SYS_RAWIO interface
> 
> #3	Ioctls that must be issued with kernel help because they change
> 	interface status and must synchronize both the device and the
> 	controller (eg 'go to UDMA3')
> 
> What can hopefully go is ioctls that are complex, setuid required and 
> could be done by #2.

Amen. I was of course not arguing against the cdrom abstraction layer.