> On Thu, 2008-02-14 at 18:39 +0100, Miklos Szeredi wrote: > > > > And I'm not against doing it with the "at*" variants, as Trond > > > > suggested. > > > > > > If you're going to change the syscall, then you should ensure that it > > > solves _all_ the problems that are known at this time. Ignoring the > > > automounter issue is just going to force us to redo the syscall in a > > > couple of months... > > > > Sure. > > > > Although, an (almost) equivalent userspace code would be: > > > > mount_fooat(int fd, const char *path) > > { > > char tmpbuf[64]; > > int tmpfd = openat(fd, path); > > > > sprintf(tmpbuf, "/proc/self/fd/%i", tmpfd); > > return mount_foo(tmpbuf, ...); > > } > > > > Or is there something (other than not requiring proc) that the *at > > variant gives? > > The ability to have a daemon handle mounting onto a directory that only > exists in another process's private namespace. > > Say I'm running in my private namespace that contains paths that are not > shared by the trusted 'init' namespace. If I were to step on an > autofs-like trap, I'd like for the kernel to be able to notify the > automounter that is running in the trusted namespace set up by 'init', > and have it mount the directory onto my namespace. This should happen > even if the path is not shared. > > With mountat() the kernel can still pass the necessary information to > the automounter by giving it a directory file descriptor 'fd' that > points to the directory on top of which it wants the mount to occur. > Then automounter then executes > > mountat(AT_FDCWD, dev_name, fd, '.', type, flags, data); > > and hey presto, the magic occurs. I understand perfectly that this is what you want to do. And I'm saying that the following code snippet should do exactly the same, without having to add a new syscall: char tmpbuf[64]; sprintf(tmpbuf, "/proc/self/fd/%i", fd); mount(dev_name, tmpbuf, type, flags, data); [ You could actually try to read people's responses, instead of immediately assuming they don't understand :-/ ] So again, what is the advantage of a mountat() syscall over just using the proc trick? Miklos - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-fsdevel" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html