From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Jul 18 13:19:14 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 68FCE37B401; Fri, 18 Jul 2003 13:19:14 -0700 (PDT) Received: from www.bluecirclesoft.com (cvg-65-26-145-190.cinci.rr.com [65.26.145.190]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3F97643FBF; Fri, 18 Jul 2003 13:19:13 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from marc.ramirez@bluecirclesoft.com) Received: from www.bluecirclesoft.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) h6IKIcxi062383; Fri, 18 Jul 2003 16:18:38 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from mrami@bluecirclesoft.com) Received: from localhost (mrami@localhost)h6IKIbDZ062380; Fri, 18 Jul 2003 16:18:38 -0400 (EDT) X-Authentication-Warning: www.bluecirclesoft.com: mrami owned process doing -bs Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 16:18:37 -0400 (EDT) From: Marc Ramirez To: Julian Elischer In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20030718160451.I61759@www.bluecirclesoft.com> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: deischen@freebsd.org cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Communications kernel -> userland X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 20:19:14 -0000 On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Julian Elischer wrote: > > > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Marc Ramirez wrote: > > > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Daniel Eischen wrote: > > > > > On Fri, 18 Jul 2003, Marc Ramirez wrote: > > > > I asked this in -questions, but got no response; sorry for the repost. > > > > > > > > I have a device driver that needs to make requests for data from a > > > > userland daemon. What's the preferred method for doing this in 4.8R and > > > > 5.1R? I'm assuming the answer is Unix-domain sockets... > > > > > > I think you got it backwards. Not that you can't > > > do what you want to do, but it's usually the other > > > way around. > > > > > > Your daemon should listen on the device (blocking > > > ioctl or read) and send data to the device when > > > it is ready for it (using write or ioctl). > > > > Sorry - I'll be more specific. > > > > I have a remote datastore that I want to present as a filesystem. There > > are two parts to this: fetching raw data over the network, and doing some > > processing on the data. For purposes of maintainability, I'd like to do > > as little of this as possible inside the kernel, so I've currently got a > > daemon to fetch and process the data, and then pipes it over a socket to > > the kernel FS layer. > > > > Anyway I'm trying to move on from the "accurate" stage of development to > > the "accurate and speedy" stage, so I'm asking around... :) > > Isn't that what the 'portalfs' is for? Actually, I just read the manpage, and I'm a little confused on what portalfs is for... :) but it appears that it's just for letting you use establish network connections via the FS... maybe... (plus that 'fs' thing). I actually have large sets of data that I dynamically want to present as a hierarchy (even different hierarchies based on, say, environment variables, but I haven had quite that need yet). I'm constantly writing software to do all kinds of wierd things to this data that's in several big blobs. It'll save me much time in the long run if I can just dynamically view it as an FS. I worry about regularizing the data and the users worry about find and perl scripts. Marc. -- Marc Ramirez Blue Circle Software Corporation 513-688-1070 (main) 513-382-1270 (direct) www.bluecirclesoft.com