Re: Thoughts about proc permission handling

[Andrew Valencia <vandys@cisco.com> writes:]

(stuff deleted...)

> I'm rethinking the pstat() system call itself. It's starting to feel like
> too much code, too intrusive. Perhaps it should just mmap() physical pages
> and try to snapshot system state on the fly. This would make the /proc
> server much more important, and much more intimate with the kernel innards.
> That should probably be OK, so long as it's all in one place.
>
> It leaves the /proc server exposed to race conditions. I used to think this
> was a big enough issue that a kernel mechanism was needed. Now that we've
> written it and played with it some, I'm not convinced. There are some
> things (like networking) which, once you let them into the kernel, become a
> serious case of the tail wagging the dog. Statistical/status inquiries
> might actually fall into this category.

If race conditions are acceptable, why not keep pstat() a system call
but make it retrieve the information without doing any locking ?

Regards,
Robert.
Received on Mon Dec 5 07:42:14 1994