On 2014-04-03 04:25, Michael Kerrisk (man-pages) wrote: > [CC += Peter Zijlstra] > [CC += bug-readline@xxxxxxx -- maintainers, it _may_ be desirable to > fix your msync() call] I didn't see bug-readline@xxxxxxx in the CC list -- did you forget to add them, or were they BCC'd? >> * Clearer intentions. Looking at the existing code and the code >> history, the fact that flags=0 behaves like flags=MS_ASYNC appears >> to be a coincidence, not the result of an intentional choice. > > Maybe. You earlier asserted that the semantics when flags==0 may have > been different, prior to Peter Zijstra's patch, > https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/commit/?id=204ec841fbea3e5138168edbc3a76d46747cc987 > . > It's not clear to me that that is the case. But, it would be wise to > CC the developer, in case he has an insight. Good idea, thanks. > But, even if you could find and fix every application that misuses > msync(), new kernels with your proposed changes would still break old > binaries. Linus has made it clear on numerous occasions that kernel > changes must not break user space. So, the change you suggest is never > going to fly (and Christoph's NAK at least saves Linus yelling at you > ;-).) OK -- that's a good enough reason for me. > I think the only reasonable solution is to better document existing > behavior and what the programmer should do. Greg mentioned the possibility of syslogging a warning the first time a process uses msync() with neither flag set. Another alternative would be to do this in userspace: modify the {g,u}libc shims to log a warning to stderr. And there's yet another alternative that's probably a bad idea but I'll toss it out anyway: I'm not very familiar with the Linux kernel, but the NetBSD kernel defines multiple versions of some syscalls for backward-compatibility reasons. A new non-backward-compatible version of an existing syscall gets a new syscall number. Programs compiled against the latest headers use the new version of the syscall but old binaries still get the old behavior. I imagine folks would frown upon doing something like this in Linux for msync() (create a new version that EINVALs if neither flag is specified), but it would be a way to migrate toward a portability-friendly behavior while maintaining compatibility with existing binaries. (Sloppy userspace programs would still need to be fixed, so this would still "break userspace".) > With that in mind, I've > drafted the following text for the msync(2) man page: > > NOTES > According to POSIX, exactly one of MS_SYNC and MS_ASYNC must be > specified in flags. However, Linux permits a call to msync() > that specifies neither of these flags, with semantics that are > (currently) equivalent to specifying MS_ASYNC. (Since Linux > 2.6.19, MS_ASYNC is in fact a no-op, since the kernel properly > tracks dirty pages and flushes them to storage as necessary.) > Notwithstanding the Linux behavior, portable, future-proof appli‐ > cations should ensure that they specify exactly one of MS_SYNC > and MS_ASYNC in flags. > > Comments on this draft welcome. I agree with Greg's reply to this note. How about this text instead: Exactly one of MS_SYNC and MS_ASYNC must be specified in flags. If neither flag is set, the behavior is unspecified. I'll follow up with a new patch that explicitly defaults to MS_ASYNC (to document the desire to maintain compaitibility and to prevent unexpected problems if msync() is ever overhauled again). Thanks, Richard -- To unsubscribe, send a message with 'unsubscribe linux-mm' in the body to majordomo@xxxxxxxxx. For more info on Linux MM, see: http://www.linux-mm.org/ . Don't email: <a href