[OpenAFS-devel] Solaris afs.rc file damage

[Dean Anderson]

On Tue, 8 May 2007, Russ Allbery wrote:

> Given that the only way that OpenAFS ever adds system calls now is by
> locating the system call table by binary search in memory and patching it
> at runtime, and given that in the very latest kernels the system call
> table is now in a read-only memory segment, I'm pretty sure the HOWTO is
> wrong.

Then the Linux kernel has indeed made system calls not dynamically
loadable. This is a disappointing, but not unexpected event.  I think
this event should at least motivate some thought to create a patch
system similar to netfilter, that patches the kernel source according to
the kernel version. Or at least instructions on how to add the AFS
kernel code as a staticly linked module on linux. I don't think this is
hard.  Netfilter does it and all sorts of non-kernel developers build
patched kernels for netfilter updates.

Without a system call, we aren't going to be able to use Tom Keiser's
work at full speed on Linux.  But I don't think this is a 'hurry' until
Tom's work is closer to ready. And it depends on the real performance
penalty to using an ioctl vs a system call.  Tom?

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