[ale] Anyone here who is good with kernel programming?

[Brian Pitts]

On 02/12/2010 11:17 PM, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
> On 02/12/2010 11:11 PM, Brian Pitts wrote:
>> On 02/12/2010 03:48 PM, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
>>> On Fri, 2010-02-12 at 14:14 -0500, Michael B. Trausch wrote:
>>>> I'm finding myself (again!) running into the annoying limitation of not
>>>> being able to write directly to optical media without third-party
>>>> programs.
>>
>> Why the limitation on third party programs?
> 
> Because this is a server system where bare essentials really are the 
> only appropriate thing to do.
> 
> It seems to me that this is something that should not require anything 
> more than basic Unix tools.  Now, I could write some stuff and put 
> additional stuff on the server, but I think I'd rather go for what I 
> think is the right solution---treat a normal block device that has the 
> caveat of only being able to be written sequentially and only when the 
> disc is already blank.  That makes sense to me.  Does that not make 
> sense to you?  If not, I'd like to hear why---it might change my thought 
> on it.

I don't object to this feature on any principle. Quite the opposite, I
think it would be neat and handy. I'm just uncertain why you think
writing from tar directly to the dvd device is the only feasible way for
your client to make backups. It's probably none of my business, since
this is a technical list and this isn't a technical issue, but I'm
puzzled why your client would prefer that you hack on the kernel rather
than just set up existing software to get the job done.

-- 
All the best,
Brian Pitts