Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 26 Mar 1997 14:10:52 +0200 (EET) | From | Mikko Ala-Fossi <> | Subject | Raw-device-war (was Re: Sharing SCSI disks) |
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On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, David S. Miller wrote:
> Date: Tue, 25 Mar 1997 14:25:38 -0800 (PST) > From: Michael Neuffer <neuffer@nomis.i-Connect.Net>
> On Tue, 25 Mar 1997, Illuminati Primus wrote: > > However, unlike an MS OS, you are always free to join in the development > > effort. If RAW IO in linux is important to you, you could always help > > implement it instead of continue to whine about its absence.
> We did, it got stopped cold it its tracks by Linus.
> Since when does pinhead Torvalds completely control what features > Linux provides for "everyone" on the planet? He never has and he > never will.
Since this raw-device-war is going personal and is going to last till someone is dead, I have a proposal.
Raw-device support could be done as a kernel module and only necessary hooks should be made to the kernel itself. Since there is a danger that people who don't _really_ need those raw devices will try to use them to speed up their applications, it should be made difficult to use raw-device and it should not be default or automatic behaviour of the kernel.
We don't want MS-DOS syndrome where every application has access to raw-devices and do their own hardware drivers. Whole idea of Linux is that hardware and raw devices are centralized under kernel control to provide certain common services to these devices that are buffered and optimized to the last byte. (however GGI follows idea presented but it is not added to the kernel, that's why we have too diverce support for graphics)
There are few ways to do support for raw devices without adding it to the official kernel itself: 1. Maintain your own patches to linux kernel to do support for raw devices. 2. Try to convince kernel maintainers to add hooks and do your own module (distributed as a separate source file).
Hooks for the raw-device support should however be under kernel option and should default to not to support raw-devices. I think it is not wise to add straight raw-device support to kernel, because it is a message to application programmers to start using their own buffer- routines to optimize their application performance.
-=- malafoss@cc.hut.fi -=- searching the marvels of universe -=-
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