Re: [PATCH v6 02/16] chardev: introduce cdev_get_by_path()

[Logan Gunthorpe]

On 2019-07-25 12:27 p.m., Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote:
>>> Why do you have a "string" within the kernel and are not using the
>>> normal open() call from userspace on the character device node on the
>>> filesystem in your namespace/mount/whatever?
>>
>> NVMe-OF is configured using configfs. The target is specified by the
>> user writing a path to a configfs attribute. This is the way it works
>> today but with blkdev_get_by_path()[1]. For the passthru code, we need
>> to get a nvme_ctrl instead of a block_device, but the principal is the same.
> 
> Why isn't a fd being passed in there instead of a random string?

I wouldn't know the answer to this but I assume because once we decided
to use configfs, there was no way for the user to pass the kernel an fd.

> Seems odd, but oh well, that ship sailed a long time ago for block
> devices I guess.

Yup.

> So what do you actually _do_ with that char device once you have it?

We lookup the struct nvme_ctrl and use it to submit passed-through NVMe
commands directly to the controller.

Logan