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  • Peter Rajnoha's avatar
    kobject: support passing in variables for synthetic uevents · f36776fa
    Peter Rajnoha authored
    
    
    This patch makes it possible to pass additional arguments in addition
    to uevent action name when writing /sys/.../uevent attribute. These
    additional arguments are then inserted into generated synthetic uevent
    as additional environment variables.
    
    Before, we were not able to pass any additional uevent environment
    variables for synthetic uevents. This made it hard to identify such uevents
    properly in userspace to make proper distinction between genuine uevents
    originating from kernel and synthetic uevents triggered from userspace.
    Also, it was not possible to pass any additional information which would
    make it possible to optimize and change the way the synthetic uevents are
    processed back in userspace based on the originating environment of the
    triggering action in userspace. With the extra additional variables, we are
    able to pass through this extra information needed and also it makes it
    possible to synchronize with such synthetic uevents as they can be clearly
    identified back in userspace.
    
    The format for writing the uevent attribute is following:
    
        ACTION [UUID [KEY=VALUE ...]
    
    There's no change in how "ACTION" is recognized - it stays the same
    ("add", "change", "remove"). The "ACTION" is the only argument required
    to generate synthetic uevent, the rest of arguments, that this patch
    adds support for, are optional.
    
    The "UUID" is considered as transaction identifier so it's possible to
    use the same UUID value for one or more synthetic uevents in which case
    we logically group these uevents together for any userspace listeners.
    The "UUID" is expected to be in "xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx"
    format where "x" is a hex digit. The value appears in uevent as
    "SYNTH_UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx" environment variable.
    
    The "KEY=VALUE" pairs can contain alphanumeric characters only. It's
    possible to define zero or more more pairs - each pair is then delimited
    by a space character " ". Each pair appears in synthetic uevents as
    "SYNTH_ARG_KEY=VALUE" environment variable. That means the KEY name gains
    "SYNTH_ARG_" prefix to avoid possible collisions with existing variables.
    To pass the "KEY=VALUE" pairs, it's also required to pass in the "UUID"
    part for the synthetic uevent first.
    
    If "UUID" is not passed in, the generated synthetic uevent gains
    "SYNTH_UUID=0" environment variable automatically so it's possible to
    identify this situation in userspace when reading generated uevent and so
    we can still make a difference between genuine and synthetic uevents.
    
    Signed-off-by: default avatarPeter Rajnoha <prajnoha@redhat.com>
    Signed-off-by: default avatarGreg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
    f36776fa