A netlink-based user-space crypto API

Posted Oct 21, 2010 14:23 UTC (Thu) by ken (subscriber, #625)
In reply to: A netlink-based user-space crypto API by neilbrown
Parent article: A netlink-based user-space crypto API

I have to confess that I do not understand what problem the open() ioctl() interface have that the socket() setsockopt() bind() accept() solves.

To me it looks like you just transform magic ioctl number into magic socket options and magic sendmsg() commands.

where is the benefit over /dev/crypto ??

A netlink-based user-space crypto API

Posted Nov 1, 2010 4:49 UTC (Mon) by kevinm (guest, #69913) [Link]

The advantage that the sockets API has over ioctl is that the former provides a single, standard, already implemented and tested method of marshalling and unmarshalling parameters kernel-side.

The fundamental problem of the ioctl interface is that every implementer of the interface must re-implement that parameter marshalling - for every arch. There are plenty of ioctl()s that *still* don't work properly for IA32 callers on x86-64 arch.