ioctl vs netlink vs memmap to communicate between kernel space and user space

by
  • Kernel services can send information directly to user applications over Netlink, while you’d have explicitly poll the kernel with ioctl functions, a relatively expensive operation.
  • Netlink comms is very much asynchronous, with each side receiving messages at some point after the other side sends them. ioctls are purely synchronous: “Hey kernel, WAKE UP! I need you to process my request NOW! CHOP CHOP!”

  • Netlink supports multicast communications between the kernel and multiple user-space processes, while ioctls are strictly one-to-one.

  • Netlink messages can be lost for various reasons (e.g. out of memory), while ioctls are generally more reliable due to their immediate-processing nature.

So If you asking for statistics to kernel from user space(application) it is more reliable and easy to use IOCTL while if you generate statistics in kernel space and you want your kernel space to send those data to user space(application) you have to use Netlink sockets.

More Related Contents:

  1. kernel stack and user space stack
  2. How to mmap a Linux kernel buffer to user space?
  3. Do Kernel pages get swapped out?
  4. Just black screen after running Qemu
  5. Linux Stack Sizes
  6. init function invocation of drivers compiled into kernel
  7. How can I monitor the NIC status(up/down) in a C program without polling the kernel?
  8. How do the likely/unlikely macros in the Linux kernel work and what is their benefit?
  9. ./configure : /bin/sh^M : bad interpreter [duplicate]
  10. What does “&” at the end of a linux command mean?
  11. asynchronous IO io_submit latency in Ubuntu Linux
  12. Calling printf in x86_64 using GNU assembler
  13. Why is a tilde in a path not expanded in a shell script?
  14. Keep SSH session alive [closed]
  15. Maximum length of command line argument that can be passed to SQL*Plus?
  16. Perl command line multi-line replace
  17. How to handle OpenSSL SSL_ERROR_WANT_READ / WANT_WRITE on non-blocking sockets
  18. Linux Script to check if process is running and act on the result
  19. How can I select a static library to be linked while ARM cross compiling?
  20. How to configure postgresql for the first time?
  21. How to monitor Linux UDP buffer available space?
  22. How Linux handles threads and process scheduling
  23. Any way to reserve but not commit memory in linux?
  24. Controlling a USB power supply (on/off) with Linux
  25. Can’t clone a github repo on Linux via HTTPS
  26. Meaning of tilde in Linux bash (not home directory)
  27. Can I tell Linux not to swap out a particular processes’ memory?
  28. Proper way to reference files relative to application root in Node.JS
  29. Why no output is shown when using grep twice?
  30. undefined reference to symbol even when nm indicates that this symbol is present in the shared library

Leave a Comment