Per-instance devpts

From: H. Peter Anvin
Date: Fri Aug 01 2008 - 14:42:26 EST


Since the issue of PTY namespaces came up (and was rejected) back in April, I have thought a little bit about changing ptys to be tied directly into a devpts instance. devpts would then be a "normal" filesystem, which can be mounted multiple times (or not at all). pty's would then become private to a devpts instance.

This is what it would appear would have to change, and I'd like to get people's feeing for the user-space impact:

1. /dev/ptmx would have to change to a symlink, ptmx -> pts/ptmx.
2. Permissions on /dev/ptmx would not be persistent, and would have to
be set via devpts mount options (unless they're 0666 root.tty, which
would presumably be the default.)
3. The /proc/sys/kernel/pty limit would be global; a per-filesystem
limit could be added on top or instead (presumably via a filesystem
mount options.)

I worry #1 would have substantial user-space impact, but I don't see a way around it, since there would be no obvious way to associate /dev/ptmx with a filesystem.

-hpa
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/