Subject: Re: [PATCH v2 0/2] vfs: Define new syscall getumask.
To: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
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Cc: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>,
        Mathieu Desnoyers <mathieu.desnoyers@efficios.com>,
        "Richard W.M. Jones" <rjones@redhat.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
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        Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>, luto@kernel.org,
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        Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@parallels.com>, sfr@canb.auug.org.au,
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        arnd@arndb.de, ebiederm@xmission.com, gorcunov <gorcunov@openvz.org>,
        iulia manda21 <iulia.manda21@gmail.com>,
        dave hansen <dave.hansen@linux.intel.com>, mguzik <mguzik@redhat.com>,
        adobriyan@gmail.com, Davidlohr Bueso <dave@stgolabs.net>,
        linux-api <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>, gorcunov@gmail.com,
        fw@deneb.enyo.de, Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
From: "H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>
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Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2016 19:02:42 -0700
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On 04/17/16 18:09, Greg KH wrote:
>>
>> There aren't a *lot* of such system calls, but even in that thread the
>> "oh, only two applications need this, let them use syscall(3)" seems to
>> remain.
> 
> And only 2 applications will continue to use it because no one wants to
> write syscall() wrappers for their individual applications, so it's a
> vicious cycle :(
> 
> I really like the 'libinux' idea, did anyone every hack up a first-pass
> at this?  And I'm guessing we have more syscalls now that would need to
> be added (like getrandom(), but that shouldn't be too difficult.
> 

I haven't hacked anything up yet, but I think it would be easy to simply
take the klibc machinery, remove the stuff that isn't needed, and adjust
the handling of errno(3).  I think it is time I admit that it needs to
be put on my TODO list.

	-hpa