From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1763165AbZFPUzi (ORCPT ); Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:55:38 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1761161AbZFPUzI (ORCPT ); Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:55:08 -0400 Received: from bombadil.infradead.org ([18.85.46.34]:50516 "EHLO bombadil.infradead.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1760791AbZFPUzG (ORCPT ); Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:55:06 -0400 Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:54:54 -0400 From: Christoph Hellwig To: David Howells Cc: torvalds@osdl.org, akpm@linux-foundation.org, linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jacob Thebault-Spieker , linux-afs@lists.infradead.org Subject: Re: [PATCH 01/17] VFS: Implement the pioctl() system call Message-ID: <20090616205454.GA2181@infradead.org> References: <20090616203845.4526.60013.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> <20090616203850.4526.83585.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20090616203850.4526.83585.stgit@warthog.procyon.org.uk> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) X-SRS-Rewrite: SMTP reverse-path rewritten from by bombadil.infradead.org See http://www.infradead.org/rpr.html Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Jun 16, 2009 at 09:38:51PM +0100, David Howells wrote: > From: Jacob Thebault-Spieker > > Implement the pioctl() system call. This is used to support a number of AFS > functions, and could also be used for Coda and other filesystems. Umm, adding a new system call multiplexer without any structure is a serious no-go. And this one is much worse than ioctl, which with a fixed [fd,cmd,arg] tuple seems like a stronhold of sanity compred to this monster with multiple arguments and a path that may or may not be there. I think you'd be better of writing tools that use a sane interface than adding a big pile of crap like this to the kernel.