On Sunday 25 April 2010 19:49:51 Linus Torvalds wrote:
> In the long run (this is a year from now, when we rename "unlocked_ioctl" 
> back to just "ioctl"), the vfs_ioctl code will just do
> 
>                 struct file_operations *fops = filp->f_op;
> 
>                 if (!fops)
>                         return -ENOTTY;
> 
>                 if (fops->ioctl) {
>                         int error = fops->ioctl(...)
>                         if (error == -ENOIOCTLCMD)
>                                 error = -EINVAL;
>                         return error;
>                 }
>         #ifdef CONFIG_BKL
>                 if (fops->bkl_ioctl) {
>                         int error;
>                         lock_kernel();
>                         error = fops->bkl_ioctl(...)
>                         unlock_kernel();
>                         return error;
>                 }
>         #endif
>                 return -ENOTTY;

We could also stop playing games with with this and just kill the
locked variant of ioctl right away. No rename to bkl_ioctl, no
helper functions.

It's served it's purpose and we now have the list of 157 files
that still use fops->ioctl, so if we just push the BKL into those
files and make them use unlocked_ioctl, we will be able to remove
->ioctl for good. We can do the rename of ->unlocked_ioctl to
->ioctl right after that if you like, or in a year from now, I
don't care.

	Arnd