Re: Linux Kernel and Webservices

[Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu]

On Tue, 02 May 2006 07:51:18 +0500, Irfan Habib said:
> I wanted to know if modulescan be developed in the linux kernel, which
> can create TCP/UDP sockets and communicate with perhaps webservices,
> residing in the user level in the same computer or in some other
> computer.

> Is a networking API available in the linux kernel which can be used by
> linux kernel modules, if so is there any documentation for it?

It's generally considered a Bad Idea, as it's almost certainly easier to
do in userspace.  If you're trying to to instrument a network-based monitoring
system and need access to kernel data, you're *much* better off having the
kernel export the data via netlink or even abuse of /proc or /sys, and then
a small userspace program read the data and ship it over the net.  There's
a *lot* of things that you just won't have access to in kernel space (for
starters, you don't have a DNS resolver, so you can't use hostnames for
configuration).

If you're determined to do this in kernelspace anyhow, see the
linux-2.6-tux.patch in recent RedHat/Fedora kernels, and ask yourself why
that patch has no hope of being accepted upstream (although I have a great
amount of respect for a lot of things that come out of RedHat, *that* patch
is best described  "a fully RFC1925-compliant networking pig, with afterburners")

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