Re: [Nbd] [PATCH 4/4] nbd: add a nbd-control interface

[Alex Bligh <alex@...872...>]

> On 25 Jan 2017, at 16:48, Alex Gartrell <agartrell@...2204...> wrote:
> 
> 
> If nbd were *all* netlink I think that that'd be fine, but you'd have
> problems implementing the NBD_DOIT function in that fashion.  So I'd
> rather stick to the char device ioctl thing because it's more
> consistent with the old NBD stuff as well as the loop device stuff.

I spend most of my time looking at the userspace side of NBD so
apologies if this is off base.

Given (because of NBD_DO_IT) we need an ioctl anyway, and we have
an ioctl that isn't going to go away, it would seem better if possible
to stick with ioctls, and not introduce either a dependency
on netlink (which would presumably bloat static binaries that
are used early in the boot process). Personally I'd have thought
adding a new NBD ioctl (or extending an existing one) would be
less entropy than adding a new char device.

-- 
Alex Bligh