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Date:      Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:08:31 +0100
From:      Dieter <freebsd@sopwith.solgatos.com>
To:        freebsd-drivers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: userspace driver API ? 
Message-ID:  <200707222308.XAA17276@sopwith.solgatos.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 22 Jul 2007 14:34:51 PDT." <20070722213451.GA99491@funkthat.com> 

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> I've been thinking about similar things for a while...   Though I have
> a few concerns...
> 
> a) a stable API is something that Linus has touted as something that will
> not happen for Linux, so yes, it's "stable" but can we truely depend
> upon that?

>From the bits I read, it sounds like it is the interfaces within
the kernel that will change at will, the interfaces between the
kernel and userland will be stable.

> b) w/o direct DMA, it's not as useful, and implementing direct DMA
> isn't that difficult (I do direct DMA to userland buffers for bktrau
> and cxd)...

So propose an extension to allow DMA?

Additional concerns include:

Did they get anything significantly wrong?

Did they leave out anything besides DMA?

Could this create any security problems?

It could help the binary-only crowd, since binaries in userland
aren't quite as bad as binaries in the kernel.



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