From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1756787AbZC0VoU (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:44:20 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751428AbZC0VoJ (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:44:09 -0400 Received: from vena.lwn.net ([206.168.112.25]:35572 "EHLO vena.lwn.net" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750863AbZC0VoI (ORCPT ); Fri, 27 Mar 2009 17:44:08 -0400 Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:44:03 -0600 From: Jonathan Corbet To: Michael Tokarev Cc: Dan Carpenter , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, eteo@redhat.com Subject: Re: [patch] char/raw.c locking on error Message-ID: <20090327154403.4712afe3@bike.lwn.net> In-Reply-To: <49CD46C8.8040606@msgid.tls.msk.ru> References: <20090327094812.32d0d5e7@bike.lwn.net> <49CD46C8.8040606@msgid.tls.msk.ru> Organization: LWN.net X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.0 (GTK+ 2.15.5; x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Sat, 28 Mar 2009 00:36:08 +0300 Michael Tokarev wrote: > Is it still in use - the raw driver, that is? Nowadays, > every block device can be opened in direct mode by using > O_DIRECT - this is what raw does. I mean, is it worth > spending even more time on it? This was discussed a while back. My understanding is that there are people using it. It is a user-space ABI of sorts which can't just be yanked arbitrarily. The right thing to do is probably to replace it with a shell implementation that just opens the device using O_DIRECT, but nobody has actually done that... jon