From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Aug 20 18:00:16 2014 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [8.8.178.115]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ADH-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 07F7FD75 for ; Wed, 20 Aug 2014 18:00:16 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-vc0-x236.google.com (mail-vc0-x236.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:400c:c03::236]) (using TLSv1 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-RC4-SHA (128/128 bits)) (Client CN "smtp.gmail.com", Issuer "Google Internet Authority G2" (verified OK)) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id BD0503E56 for ; Wed, 20 Aug 2014 18:00:15 +0000 (UTC) Received: by mail-vc0-f182.google.com with SMTP id hy4so9406321vcb.41 for ; Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:00:14 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20120113; h=mime-version:sender:date:message-id:subject:from:to:cc:content-type; bh=MJTGqY/f6vPCFJ+wDYucJUuauwEawWI3zKqjYn+keJE=; b=D8yqdMc2FKqEr7ePBz6k+gJhiwM9IrEDEGvm+fVdZ3VvVzebVl1sOQ3RyUayXo3UNZ FZj3ydu4MtJj/qM7b4kPlpADvXt1EszuHVenyjelXewpj/ktKuWbSzVaE8lH1FQIo9uP 0JBB1/O354nFgwOQWUJKE5XQg9dJB5fTapgdzlxOAejFD1v445YzBq+Nz53n7zoV9JHS EUm6uyZhNNou3WUJwqTi4j/rvWVKuko5nX+fZiepPmwwXSqouOZZcCCS+tRulsB188Aa beqs7LodBDrqnJKvH3voApB1aXG5WjizDiGWvXR3hyYoViY+AtAXFo/wpeBGABjGmQ4f jhqA== MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.221.61.5 with SMTP id wu5mr37674383vcb.13.1408557614751; Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:00:14 -0700 (PDT) Sender: davide.italiano@gmail.com Received: by 10.220.225.201 with HTTP; Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:00:14 -0700 (PDT) Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 11:00:14 -0700 X-Google-Sender-Auth: f9e89JTPKtlqsVmtjOhWA67L6UM Message-ID: Subject: RFC: Remove pty(4) From: Davide Italiano To: freebsd-current Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Cc: Ed Schouten X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.18-1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 18:00:16 -0000 One of my personal goals for 11 is to get rid of cloning mechanism entirely, and pty(4) is one of the few in-kernel drivers still relying on such mechanism. It's not possible, at least to my understanding, converting pty(4) to cdevpriv(9) as happened with other drivers. This is mainly because we always need a pair of devices (/dev/ptyXX and /dev/ttyXX) and userspace loops over ptyXX and after it successfully opens it tries to open the other one with the same suffix. So, having a single device is not really enough. My option, instead, is that of removing pty(4), which is nothing more than a compatibility driver, and move pmtx(4) code somewhere else. The main drawback of the removal of this is that it makes impossible to run FreeBSD <= 7 jails and SSH into them. I personally don't consider this a huge issue, in light of the fact that FreeBSD-7 has been EOL for a long time, but I would like to hear other people comments. The code review for the proposed change can be found here: https://reviews.freebsd.org/D659 If I won't get any objection I'll commit this in one week time, i.e. August 27th. -- Davide "There are no solved problems; there are only problems that are more or less solved" -- Henri Poincare