941baf6feb
Most /proc files don't have length (in fstat sense). This leads to
inefficiencies when reading such files with APIs commonly found in modern
programming languages. They open file, then fstat descriptor, get st_size
== 0 and either assume file is empty or start reading without knowing
target size.
cat(1) does OK because it uses large enough buffer by default. But naive
programs copy-pasted from SO aren't:
let mut f = std::fs::File::open("/proc/cmdline").unwrap();
let mut buf: Vec<u8> = Vec::new();
f.read_to_end(&mut buf).unwrap();
will result in
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/proc/cmdline", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
statx(0, NULL, AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT, STATX_ALL, NULL) = -1 EFAULT (Bad address)
statx(3, "", AT_STATX_SYNC_AS_STAT|AT_EMPTY_PATH, STATX_ALL, {stx_mask=STATX_BASIC_STATS|STATX_MNT_ID, stx_attributes=0, stx_mode=S_IFREG|0444, stx_size=0, ...}) = 0
lseek(3, 0, SEEK_CUR) = 0
read(3, "BOOT_IMAGE=(hd3,gpt2)/vmlinuz-5.", 32) = 32
read(3, "19.6-100.fc35.x86_64 root=/dev/m", 32) = 32
read(3, "apper/fedora_localhost--live-roo"..., 64) = 64
read(3, "ocalhost--live-swap rd.lvm.lv=fe"..., 128) = 116
read(3, "", 12)
open/stat is OK, lseek looks silly but there are 3 unnecessary reads
because Rust starts with 32 bytes per Vec<u8> and grows from there.
In case of /proc/cmdline, the length is known precisely.
Make variables readonly while I'm at it.
P.S.: I tried to scp /proc/cpuinfo today and got empty file
but this is separate story.
Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/YxoywlbM73JJN3r+@localhost.localdomain
Signed-off-by: Alexey Dobriyan <adobriyan@gmail.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Linux kernel
============
There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.
In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``. The formatted documentation can also be read online at:
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/
There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.
Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.