linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] um: change defconfig to stop spawning xterm

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:	Mon, 22 Jul 2013 17:18:32 +0530
From:	Ramkumar Ramachandra <artagnon@...il.com>
To:	Richard Weinberger <richard@....at>
Cc:	Al Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Lennart Poettering <lennart@...ttering.net>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] um: change defconfig to stop spawning xterm

> Richard Weinberger wrote:
>> Lennart, can you please explain us why /dev/tty[1..64] is forced to
>> have virtual console support?

The crux of Lennart's argument seems to be that several applications
depend on it, and that applications have to bend over backwards when
those expectations are broken [1].  He has also pointed out that
hypervisor applications implement /dev/hvc0, /dev/xvc0, and /dev/hvsi0
by convention (which serve the same purpose), and that systemd
supports them.  I'm not going to argue about hard rules, because it's
clearly possible to enable CONFIG_TTY and disable CONFIG_VT in the tty
driver (the Kconfig allows this), as um Linux has done.

Since um Linux behaves more like a "container" application, is it
feasible to replace the /dev/tty* with /dev/hvc* in a
backward-compatible manner?  I think it is, although I may be missing
something: we just have to deprecate "tty" in the command-line options
to actually point to /dev/hvc*, and enable HVC_DRIVER/HVC_CONSOLE,
right?  It should be fairly straightforward to deprecate drivers/tty.c
in favor of a newer drivers/hvc.c, I think.

Let me know if I've said something stupid, so I can stop writing the patches.

Thanks.

[1]: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/systemd-devel/2013-July/012212.html
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@...r.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/