Re: Opencomm: proplib-based syscall

[Matt Fleming <mjf%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:04:53 +0300
Elad Efrat <elad%NetBSD.org@localhost> wrote:
> 
> That said, I'd like to point out that you have received several examples
> that you are ignoring for uses for such an interface: runtime generation
> of syscalls/arguments, alternative to sysctl, alternative way to couple
> access control to a certain functionality (if you have a pseudo device,
> you're *limited* to the traditional Unix permission bits) -- less places
> to "touch" when a change of security policy is desired, a data storage
> format that can be readily externalized, sent on the wire, and inspected
> by non-NetBSD machines, or machines that are not familiar with the ABI
> of one NetBSD version or another, a data format where users should care
> about whether one field or another is present or not -- and not whether
> it changes the size/ordering of the structure, and so on.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -e.

I was looking at implementing something like you've proposed elad, in order to 
pass a proplib config file to devfs. So for example I could do,

mount -t devfs /etc/devfs.conf /dev

and have mount_devfs(8) internalize the proplib file and pass it via the mount 
syscall. Naturally, I'm in favour of your proposal.