Re: [Ksummit-2010-discuss] checkpoint-restart: naked patch

[Oren Laadan <orenl@cs.columbia.edu>]

On 11/17/2010 05:17 PM, Matt Helsley wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 12:57:40PM +0100, Tejun Heo wrote:
>> Hello, Oren.
>>
>> On 11/07/2010 10:59 PM, Oren Laadan wrote:

<snip>

>>> Or we could use linux-cr for that: do the c/r in the kernel,
>>> keep the know-how in the kernel, expose (and commit to) a
>>> per-kernel-version ABI (not vow to keep countless new individual
> 
> Oren, that statement might be read to imply that it's based on
> something as useless as kernel version numbers. Arnd has pointed out in the
> past how unsuitable that is and I tend to agree. There are at least two
> possible things we can relate it to: the SHA of the compiled kernel tree
> (which doesn't quite work because it assumes everybody uses git trees :( ),
> or perhaps the SHA/hash of the cpp-processed checkpoint_hdr.h. We could
> also stuff that header into the kernel (much like kconfigs are output from
> /proc) for programs that want the kernel to describe the ABI to them.

BTW, it's the same for userspace c/r: for the same set of features,
the format (ABI) remains unchanged. Adding features breaks this and
a new version is necessary, and conversion from old to new will be
needed.

Moreover, supporting a new feature in userspace means adding the
proper API/ABI in the kernel, including refactoring etc, which is
even harder than adding the support for it in linux-cr.

Oren.