Re: [PATCH] kernel: sysctl: make drop_caches write-only
From: Chris Down
Date: Fri Nov 01 2019 - 07:09:08 EST
Hm, not sure why my client didn't show this reply.
Andrew Morton writes:
Risk: some (odd) userspace code will break. Fixable by manually chmodding
it back again.
The only scenario I can construct in my head is that someone has built
something to watch drop_caches for modification, but we already have the kmsg
output for that.
Reward: very little.
Is the reward worth the risk?
There is evidence that this has already caused confusion[0] for many, judging
by the number of views and votes. I think the reward is higher than stated
here, since it makes the intent and lack of persistent API in the API clearer,
and less likely to cause confusion in future.
0: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/17936/10762