Re: [RFC PATCH v12 00/17] dlb: introduce DLB device driver

1. Before a scheduling domain is created/enabled, a set of parameters are
passed to the kernel driver via configfs attribute files in an configfs domain
directory (say $domain) created by user. Each attribute file corresponds to
a configuration parameter of the domain. After writing to all the attribute
files, user writes 1 to "create" attribute, which triggers an action (i.e.,
domain creation) in the kernel driver. Since multiple processes/users can
access the $domain directory, multiple users can write to the attribute files
at the same time.  How do we guarantee an atomic update/configuration of a
domain? In other words, if user A wants to set attributes 1 and 2, how can we
prevent user B from changing attribute 1 and 2 before user A writes 1 to
"create"? A configfs directory with individual attribute files seems to not
be able to provide atomic configuration in this case. One option to solve this
issue could be write a structured data (with a set of parameters) to a single
attribute file. This would guarantee the atomic configuration, but may not be
a conventional configfs operation.

How about throw away configfs and use netlink? Messages are atomic,
and you can add an arbitrary number of attributes to a single netlink
message. It will also make your code more network like, since nothing
else in the network stack uses configfs, as far as i know.

    Andrew