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Message-ID: <20080308113803.GB4016@ucw.cz>
Date: Sat, 8 Mar 2008 12:38:04 +0100
From: Pavel Machek <pavel@....cz>
To: Daniel Phillips <phillips@...nq.net>
Cc: linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, dm-devel@...hat.com
Subject: Re: [RFC] An alternative interface to device mapper
Hi!
> The patch below includes a new kernel interface generator called ddlink.
> The ddsetup device mapper interface is an instance of a ddlink
> interface, instantiated by supplying domain-specific methods for read,
> write, ioctl and poll.
> Unlike a pipe, there is no waiting for input on a ddlink: if there is
> nothing to read then the read returns immediately with zero length. If
> some other behavior is desired it can be obtained using poll.
That's kind of strange, no?
> An early version of this code was shown to Eric Biederman and Alasdair
> Kergon at OLS last year. After taking all the C99 bits out, I managed
> to convince Eric and others to actually read the examples. Let us now
> see if the (positive) reaction I observed at that time survives wider
> scrutiny.
>
> A diffstat for ddlink and ddsetup together:
>
> Documentation/ioctl-number.txt | 1
Should not description of interface go to Doc* somewhere?
> block/ll_rw_blk.c | 2
> drivers/Makefile | 1
> drivers/ddlink.c | 294 ++++++++++++++++++++
> drivers/md/Makefile | 1
> drivers/md/dm-ioctl.c | 593 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++---
> drivers/md/dm-table.c | 52 ---
> drivers/md/dm.c | 53 ---
> drivers/md/dm.h | 78 +++++
> include/linux/ddlink.h | 41 ++
> include/linux/ddsetup.h | 36 ++
> include/linux/device-mapper.h | 37 ++
> 12 files changed, 1056 insertions(+), 133 deletions(-)
>
> Currently, this implements a majority of the device mapper interface
> calls, but not all of them, so expect another hundred or two lines
> before completion. This is still significantly less code than the
> original ioctl interface (which is still in there) and much clearer.
>
> I have written two example programs, ddsetup.c and ddcreate.c. The
> former aims to be a drop-in replacement for dmsetup.c and the latter
> implements a (useful) demonstration command that creates a virtual
> device consisting of a single device mapper target, with all target
> parameters supplied on the command line.
>
> For example:
>
> ddcreate foo 10000 linear /dev/ubdb 1234
>
> ddcreate is 71 lines long including plenty of whitespace, while being
> quite general. My message is about the 71 lines.
>
> So who uses this ddsetup today? Answer: nobody. Better answer: the
> ddsnap cluster snapshot driver has a usability problem because of its
> reliance on PF_LOCAL sockets to glue components together. Filesystem
> based sockets were adopted for the component glue because it is hard to
> do anything more elegant working with the command line device mapper
> setup utility. We looked at hacking the device mapper ioctl interface
> to do what we needed, but then if we were willing to go that far then
> why not just drop the other shoe and improve the userspace interface to
> the point where it is actually pleasant to use, and maintainable too?
> This is how ddsetup was born.
>
> The next thing we need to do with this interface is demonstrate a solid
> use case by adopting it on an experimental branch of zumastor. I
> expect both ddsnap and zumastor systems to shrink as a result,
> including significantly shrinking the documentation. This has not yet
> been done yet, and until it is, this effort deserves to be firmly
> relegated to the "nice but so what" category. So, profound thanks to
> you, dear reader, for having had the stamina to read all the way to
> here, and we will see you here again after having eaten this delicious
> new dogfood ourselves.
>
> http://code.google.com/p/zumastor/source/browse/www/ddsetup/ddsetup-2.6.23.12
> http://code.google.com/p/zumastor/source/browse/www/ddsetup/ddsetup.c
> http://code.google.com/p/zumastor/source/browse/www/ddsetup/ddcreate.c
>
> [ARND 07] How to not invent kernel interfaces, Arnd Bergmann,
> arnd@...db.de, July 31, 2007
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