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From: "Zack Weinberg" <zack@owlfolio.org>
To: "Ian Kent" <ikent@redhat.com>,
	"Miklos Szeredi" <miklos@szeredi.hu>,
	"Ian Kent" <raven@themaw.net>
Cc: "Florian Weimer" <fweimer@redhat.com>,
	"GNU libc development" <libc-alpha@sourceware.org>,
	'linux-man' <linux-man@vger.kernel.org>,
	"Alejandro Colomar" <alx@kernel.org>,
	"Linux API" <linux-api@vger.kernel.org>,
	linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, "Karel Zak" <kzak@redhat.com>,
	"David Howells" <dhowells@redhat.com>,
	"Christian Brauner" <christian@brauner.io>,
	"Amir Goldstein" <amir73il@gmail.com>,
	"Arnd Bergmann" <arnd@arndb.de>
Subject: Re: proposed libc interface and man page for statmount(2)
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 2023 11:18:12 -0500	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <8a21bcea-ba93-4b3c-b99e-bb9f735c5755@app.fastmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <698dd63e-9cd8-2d22-c4ca-d8138ed97606@redhat.com>

On Tue, Nov 21, 2023, at 6:28 PM, Ian Kent wrote:
> On 22/11/23 04:42, Zack Weinberg wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 21, 2023, at 2:42 PM, Miklos Szeredi wrote:
>>> handle = listmount_open(mnt_id, flags);
>>> for (;;) {
>>>      child_id = listmount_next(handle);
>>>      if (child_id == 0)
>>>          break;
>>>      /* do something with child_id */
>>> }
>>> listmount_close(handle)
>>
>> Why can't these be plain old open, read, and close? Starting from a pathname
>> in /proc or /sys. Doesn't allow lseek.
>
> I'm not sure how this would work, there aren't a series of paths in proc
> that represent mounts?

It would be a new one created for this purpose.

listmount_open(mnt_id, flags) ==
   open("/proc/mount_ids", O_RDONLY) +
   ioctl(fd, LISTMNT_QUERY_ID, mnt_id) +
   ioctl(fd, LISTMNT_QUERY_FLAGS, flags)

and then read(fd, buf, sizeof(buf)) gives you sizeof(buf)/sizeof(mntid_t)
mount IDs.

Or, if you prefer, keep the new listmount_open() system call but have it
return a file descriptor that acts like a pipe filled with all the child
mount IDs.  The main point of my suggestion is that listmount_next and
listmount_close can, and should (IMO), just be read() and close().

Note that I'm _not_ suggesting a text-based interface like most of /proc.
What you read is native-endian binary mount IDs.

> One is that open() is a fairly high overhead system call and it so it
> won't cope well with traversing a large volume of mounts.
...
> Second is that, because the mount table lives in a file (actually more
> than one with slightly different formats) it needs to be traversed every
> time one is looking for a mount which has been shown to be high overhead,

Does my clarified explanation address these concerns?

zw

  reply	other threads:[~2023-11-22 16:18 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 23+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2023-11-15 15:08 proposed libc interface and man page for statmount(2) Miklos Szeredi
2023-11-16 20:12 ` Adhemerval Zanella Netto
2023-11-16 20:36 ` Florian Weimer
2023-11-16 21:01   ` Miklos Szeredi
2023-11-17 14:22     ` Miklos Szeredi
2023-11-17 14:47     ` Florian Weimer
2023-11-17 15:13       ` Miklos Szeredi
2023-11-17 15:50         ` Miklos Szeredi
2023-11-20 11:55           ` Miklos Szeredi
2023-11-20 12:16             ` Florian Weimer
2023-11-20 12:34               ` Miklos Szeredi
2023-11-20 23:56                 ` Ian Kent
2023-11-21  0:58                   ` Ian Kent
2023-11-21  1:12                     ` Ian Kent
2023-11-21  1:33                       ` Ian Kent
2023-11-21 19:42                         ` Miklos Szeredi
2023-11-21 20:42                           ` Zack Weinberg
2023-11-21 23:28                             ` Ian Kent
2023-11-22 16:18                               ` Zack Weinberg [this message]
2023-11-21 23:07                           ` Ian Kent
2023-11-22 10:18                           ` Christian Brauner
2023-11-20 15:38             ` Christian Brauner
2023-11-20 15:30         ` Christian Brauner

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