* Michael Buesch (freesoftwaredeveloper@web.de) wrote:
> On Sunday 06 April 2003 15:11, Dr. David Alan Gilbert wrote:
> > I keep thinking that it would be nice to have a mechanism for user space
> > char devices; it would have to have a mechanism to pass all the ioctls
> > to the process that dealt with it.
>
> But wouldn't this make too much overhead, if implemented all in userspace?
> I say this, because nbd is also implemented in user- und kernel-space.
Sure it would have overhead; but it would be a general mechanism and
mean that the kernel didn't need lots of char drivers (except for boot
time things). Lots of devices are really just filters/wrappers over
other more basic devices (look at the growing pile of USB serial
device drivers). Most char devices have such a low throughput that the
little overhead wouldn't make much difference, but would simplify the
kernel.
Dave
---------------- Have a happy GNU millennium! ----------------------
/ Dr. David Alan Gilbert | Running GNU/Linux on Alpha,68K| Happy \
\ gro.gilbert @ treblig.org | MIPS,x86,ARM,SPARC,PPC & HPPA | In Hex /
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Apr 07 2003 - 22:00:28 EST