The second half of the 5.13 merge window [LWN.net]

The second half of the 5.13 merge window

Posted May 11, 2021 5:11 UTC (Tue) by smurf (subscriber, #17840)
Parent article: The second half of the 5.13 merge window

> quotactl_path

Wait, a new path-related system call without a fd_at argument and without flags?

Looks like "lesson not learned" to me.

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The second half of the 5.13 merge window

Posted May 11, 2021 6:48 UTC (Tue) by matthias (subscriber, #94967) [Link] (2 responses)

Should be ok for this syscall. This is a quite complex syscall that takes a cmd field and a structure. If the need for flags arises, they can be put into the cmd field or the structure. Also, an additional flags field would make no sense at all. This syscall should behave like the quotactl syscall, which does not have flags. Thus any needed flags would be put into the existing cmd field and structure anyway, even if the new syscall would get a flags field.

The second half of the 5.13 merge window

Posted May 11, 2021 18:20 UTC (Tue) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link] (1 responses)

> This is a quite complex syscall that takes a cmd field and a structure.

Each command takes a *different* structure, or in some cases no structure at all. And not all of the structures are versioned to allow them to be extended with extra fields. A new system call which takes a path string but no fd_at argument or flags related to path resolution (RESOLVE_BENEATH, RESOLVE_IN_ROOT, etc.) seems like a step backward to me as well. These ought to be standard for any new path-based system call.

The second half of the 5.13 merge window

Posted May 12, 2021 11:08 UTC (Wed) by jan.kara (subscriber, #59161) [Link]

Guys, these are good points for consideration. Thanks for them. Sadly, nobody pointed these out when this syscall was posted to linux-api mailing list back in March. Maybe you should hang out there? ;) Anyway, AFAIK there's no userspace using this syscall yet and it hasn't been released in a major release so we still have a few weeks to decide what to do. I've resumed the discussion in relevant mailing lists...