Messages in this thread | | | From | (Alan Cox) | Subject | Re: Should raw I/O be added to the kernel? | Date | Fri, 18 Dec 1998 16:42:20 +0000 (GMT) |
| |
> other OS's for the sake of specific user needs; it makes sense to me that > certain types of development may take longer [i.e. the development of an > appropriate high-performance filesystem for Video I/O] but may be more > successful than they would have been had raw I/O been introduced into the > mainstream kernel. Then we would have applications crashing the system > as currently happens with many other OS's.
The point of the raw I/O (be it sendfile, O_DIRECT or otherwise) is to provide hooks that allow programs to safely access I/O without some of the existing overhead in specific cases where the program knows best.
Its not about giving direct access to the hardware. O_DIRECT says "This isnt worth caching, and please get it here efficiently". It doesnt say "excuse me I want to take over the disk controller".
Alan
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |