Re: [lxc-devel] [RFC PATCH 00/11] Add support for devtmpfs in user namespaces

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Thu, 2014-05-15 at 21:35 -0700, Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
> On Fri, May 16, 2014 at 01:49:59AM +0000, Serge Hallyn wrote:
> > > I think having to pick and choose what device nodes you want in a
> > > container is a good thing.  Becides, you would have to do the same thing
> > > in the kernel anyway, what's wrong with userspace making the decision
> > > here, especially as it knows exactly what it wants to do much more so
> > > than the kernel ever can.
> > 
> > For 'real' devices that sounds sensible.  The thing about loop devices
> > is that we simply want to allow a container to say "give me a loop
> > device to use" and have it receive a unique loop device (or 3), without
> > having to pre-assign them.  I think that would be cleaner to do using
> > a pseudofs and loop-control device, rather than having to have a
> > daemon in userspace on the host farming those out in response to
> > some, I don't know, dbus request?

> I agree that loop devices would be nice to have in a container, and that
> the existing loop interface doesn't really lend itself to that.  So
> create a new type of thing that acts like a loop device in a container.
> But don't try to mess with the whole driver core just for a single type
> of device.

Yeah, a lot of dynamic devices (like serial devices) can be handled in
user space with the proviso that we could use some way to tickle udev
and hotplug in the container with events.

But the loop device is the real ugly duckling here.  It's a unique case
of an on-demand device with a shared control device that's not really
hot-plug and not really deterministic enough to be handled purely in
user space.  It presents unique challenges unto itself.

Makes sense to me.

> greg k-h

Regards,
Mike
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