Re: autofs: make the autofsv5 packet file descriptor use a packetized pipe

[Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net>]

On Sun, 2012-04-29 at 18:56 -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 29, 2012 at 6:29 PM, Ian Kent <raven@themaw.net> wrote:
> >
> > autodir looks ok as well.
> >
> > http://sourceforge.net/projects/intraperson/files/latest/download
> 
> That looks odd, but safe.
> 
> Why does the code make the pipe file descriptor non-blocking, when it
> then always reads it using that odd "poll_read()" function that does a
> loop with poll() and read(). I guess there is some 1-second timeout
> thing.
> 
> It's a bit odd in other ways too. The "handle_events()" function is
> passed the fd, but then it never actually uses it, and uses
> 'autodir.k_pipe' instead.
> 
> So I'm having a bit of trouble following the *logic* to any of that,
> but the only reads I found did seem to match the "read whole packet"
> model, so it does look ok too.

I'm only aware that autodir uses the module and wasn't involved in the
development.

I didn't look closely at it at all, just enough to check for reads to
the kernel pipe, so I don't know either.

I'm not sure that autodir is still maintained so the only thing I'll do
is include a cc to the autodir mailing list in a any follow up mail to
the autofs list explaining the outcome of this work.

Ian