linux-kernel - Re: RFC: android logger feedback request

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Message-ID: <20111222005956.GA4862@codeaurora.org>
Date:	Wed, 21 Dec 2011 16:59:56 -0800
From:	David Brown <davidb@...eaurora.org>
To:	Tim Bird <tim.bird@...sony.com>
Cc:	linux-embedded <linux-embedded@...r.kernel.org>,
	linux kernel <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
	john stultz <johnstul@...ibm.com>, Greg KH <gregkh@...e.de>,
	Brian Swetland <swetland@...gle.com>
Subject: Re: RFC: android logger feedback request

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 02:59:15PM -0800, Tim Bird wrote:

> In Android, this system uses a fixed set of device nodes with
> well-known names: /dev/log/main, /dev/log/events, /dev/log/radio
> and /dev/log/system.

These names seem very specific to Android's use case.  Would we want
the mechanism to be more general, or configurable, so that another
embedded-type system would be able to have their own log types.

But, the biggest question I have is to understand why this is a kernel
driver.  In essence, it is just shuttling data from various processes
to something that eventually needs to read that data.  In other words,
it is doing a subset of what syslog does.  If the concern is about a
userspace program crashing, wouldn't the userspace tool that reads
this data also be able to crash?

The driver clearly has no kernel API, since it exports no symbols.  I
could see more of an argument for it if certain kernel things were
able to write to the log, but then we are also duplicating other
functionality.

David

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