Re: ncd (network character device) ?

Gabor Lenart (lgb@oxygene.terra.vein.hu)
Wed, 16 Jun 1999 17:31:17 +0200

On Wed, Jun 16, 1999 at 04:23:02PM +0100, Stephen C. Tweedie wrote:
> Supporting networked character devices is hopelessly complex. Some char
> devices have strange mmap() requirements that you just cannot do over
> the network. All of them have ioctl()s, in which the ioctl handler in
> the driver pokes around in user memory in unpredictable patterns: there
> is no certain way to tell whether the accesses will be reads or writes,
> and how much memory is touched. Marshalling all of that over the
> network wouldd be a nightmare: you would have to special-case just about
> every ioctl, and the mmap() stuff will never work (think about /dev/mem
> framebuffers for an example).

:) It's strange idea to share memory between Linux systems with exporting
/dev/mem ;-) But the goal of my idea was only export /dev/dsp and other
sound related device. OK, I know there's nas ... but what's up if I want
to redirect the "sound output" of a program which supports only direct
/dev/dsp ? This is much more easy task to implement than do it for all
character devices I see now :)

-- 
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