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On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 10:06:07PM -0500, Stephan Uphoff wrote:
>=20
> Hi,
>=20
> the usual solution is for the userland program to use a
> system call (example ioctl) to sleep in the kernel waiting for
> a query from the kernel.

When I was at NASA working on the HSM, we used our own device driver=20
(which you need for ioctl to work), and just left userland in read(2).=20
Nices things about read() as opposed to ioctl() are: 1) you can use=20
select(2)/kevent(2), and 2) you can easily handle variable-sized RPC=20
requests. Yes, you have to provide the syscall the same size userland=20
buffer in each case, but read(2) will only transfer what's there, whereas=
=20
ioctl(2) will always transfer a fixed amount of data. If you are doing RPC=
=20
that may be as large as 8k but often is much smaller, this size difference=
=20
may matter.

Take care,

Bill

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