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To: hbryan@us.ibm.com
Subject: Re: [RFC] sane access to per-fs metadata (was Re: [PATCH] Documentation/ioctl-number.txt)
In-Reply-To: <OF791BBBC5.E3FCBEEE-ON87256A18.005BA3B7@LocalDomain>
From: chip@valinux.com (Chip Salzenberg)
Organization: NASA Calendar Research
Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Message-Id: <E14jdkF-0007Ps-00@tytlal>
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2001 01:01:59 -0800
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In article <OF791BBBC5.E3FCBEEE-ON87256A18.005BA3B7@LocalDomain> you write:
>With ioctl, I can easily match a response of any kind to a request.  I can 
>even return an English text message if I want to be friendly.

But ioctl requires allocation of numbers.  Ugly and hard to scale.

Alex Viro's idea is cleaner, but still requires a fair amount of
coding even for simple interfaces.

Why not have a kernel thread and use standard RPC techniques like
sockets?  Then you'd not have to invent anything unimportant like
Yet Another IPC Technique.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg              - a.k.a. -             <chip@valinux.com>
 "We have no fuel on board, plus or minus 8 kilograms."  -- NEAR tech
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