Re: BLKSECTGET userland API breakage (2.4 and 2.6 incompatible)

[Jens Axboe]

On Thu, Oct 13 2005, Alexander Viro wrote:
> [that had started as "BLKSECTGET 32bit compat is broken"]
> 
> Situation:
> 
> all 2.4:      BLKSECTGET takes long * and is supported by several block drivers
> bio-14-pre9:  Takes BLKSECTGET to drivers/block/blkpg.c, defining it for all
>               block drivers *AND* making it take unsigned short *
> 2.5.1-pre2:   bio merge
> all 2.[56] kernels since then: BLKSECTGET takes unsigned short *
> 32bit compat: unchanged since 2.4 and thus broken on 2.[56]
> applications: we have seen ones using 2.6 ABI and getting buggered in
>               32bit compat.  Most likely there are some using 2.4 ABI...

Unfortunate situation :(

> IMO the least painful variant is to switch 2.6 compat code to match
> 2.6 native (i.e. use COMPATIBLE_IOCTL()), leave 2.4 as-is and live
> with the fact of userland ABI change between 2.4 and 2.6...

Agree.

-- 
Jens Axboe

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