Re: [RFC] connectat()/bindat() or an alternative design

["John Ericson" <mail@johnericson.me>]

On Fri, Jul 3, 2026, at 9:35 AM, Christian Brauner wrote:
> Please stop sending a bunch of disparate patch series that all do
> slightly related or overlapping things and point back at each other.
> 
> It's completely impossible to follow for anyone what's going on without
> chasing down discussion state across multiple subsystems. The net people
> have zero insight onto the fs struct discussions and it's completely
> pointless to try and design all of this based on thin air. Nothing is
> locked-in yet. This is not how this goes.
> 
> This frantic pushing of various features doesn't scale. It is requesting
> costly review time for multiple RFC series

I'm sorry for the confusion and the demands on your review time from
concurrently spreading my various Capsicum-like ideas across too many
threads. I can hereafter make things more single-threaded, as I'll
propose below. I hope that helps.

Just so we are all on the same page, at the moment I believe I have
created two RFC discussion threads, and submitted one RFC patch series:

- discussion thread: [RFC] Null Namespaces
  URL: https://lore.kernel.org/all/a49ce818-f38d-41b0-bbf7-80b8aad998b1@app.fastmail.com/
  Current status:
    - You (Christian) are writing nullfs/failfs FDs.
    - I am submitting nothing else (e.g. the actual null namespaces)
      until that is done.

- discussion thread: [RFC] connectat()/bindat() or an alternative design
  (this one)
  URL: https://lore.kernel.org/all/b1af80fc-a57c-408d-bdfe-fa6bae26eaca@app.fastmail.com/
  Current status: Working on one patch:
    - Patch Series: [RFC PATCH 0/3] coredump, net: fix layer violation
      with direct connection
      URL: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260703073948.2541875-1-John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems/
    - I am not submitting any UAPI changes until that is done.
  (Note: This thread had some code in the first message, but I never
  meant for that to be a formal submission, just a discussion aid, and
  the conversation moved on from that original design anyways.)

To make things maximally single-threaded, I could pause working on
"coredump, net: fix layer violation" (i.e. preparing a v2 based on what
you requested in your review) until you are done implementing
nullfs/failfs FDs. I am actually quite happy to do that if you want; I
should spend less time on the computer the next few days anyways, so the
timing is very good for that.

Either way, I can also henceforth not refer to yet-unwritten and
-unmerged patches like nullfs/failfs FDs in the motivation for other
things.

John

P.S. There is also my non-RFC bugfix series:

[PATCH net] af_unix: fix listen() succeeding on sockets in the wrong state
URL: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20260703081416.2583118-1-John.Ericson@Obsidian.Systems/

but I don't believe you were referring to that one, since I think
bugfixes are supposed to be submitted separately and immediately. Do
correct me if I am wrong.