On Tue, Jul 07, 2020 at 07:48:00PM +0200, Christoph Hellwig wrote: > If a file implements the ->read_iter method, the iter based splice read > works and is always preferred over the ->read based one. Use it by > default in do_splice_to and remove all the direct assignment of > generic_file_splice_read to file_operations. The worst problem here is the assumption that all ->read_iter() instances will take pipe-backed destination; that's _not_ automatically true. In particular, it's almost certainly false for tap_read_iter() (as well as tun_chr_read_iter() in IFF_VNET_HDR case). Other potentially interesting cases: cuse and hugetlbfs. But in any case, that blind assertion ("iter based splice read works") really needs to be backed by something.