[systemd-devel] Suspending access to opened/active /dev/nodes during application runtime

[Lukasz Pawelczyk]

On 7 Mar 2014, at 20:09, Greg KH <gregkh at linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 07, 2014 at 07:46:44PM +0100, Lukasz Pawelczyk wrote:
>> Problem:
>> Has anyone thought about a mechanism to limit/remove an access to a
>> device during an application runtime? Meaning we have an application
>> that has an open file descriptor to some /dev/node and depending on
>> *something* it gains or looses the access to it gracefully (with or
>> without a notification, but without any fatal consequences).
>> 
>> Example:
>> LXC. Imagine we have 2 separate containers. Both running full operating
>> systems. Specifically with 2 X servers. Both running concurrently of
>> course. Both need the same input devices (e.g. we have just one mouse).
> 
> Stop right there.
> 
> If they "both" need an input device, then they should use the "shared"
> input device stream, i.e. evdev.
> 
> And it goes the same for every type of device the kernel is exposing to
> userspace, if you want to "share" them, then you need to work on
> changing the kernel to be able to handle shared devices.

I think you might have misunderstood me. They are using a shared input stream (evdev in this case). The problem is I don’t want them to eavesdrop on each other. So it’s not about making it to work. It’s about making them to work „in turns”.

> And odds are, you will get back a big "as-if" comment from the kernel
> developers, as for almost all devices, they can't be shared, for very
> good reasons.

Evdev devices can.


-- 
Regards,
Havner