Not logged in Log in now Create an account Subscribe to LWN Weekly Edition Return to the Kernel page Recent Features Reservations for must-succeed memory allocations LWN.net Weekly Edition for March 12, 2015 GitHub unveils its Licenses API Allowing small allocations to fail A GPL-enforcement suit against VMware Printable page LC First row - content links Weekly edition Kernel Security Distributions Contact Us Search Second row: navigation links Archives Calendar Subscribe Write for LWN LWN.net FAQ Sponsors [Posted October 22, 2002 by corbet] This article is part of the LWN Porting Drivers to 2.5 series . Linus and numerous other kernel developers dislike the ioctl() system call, seeing it as an uncontrolled way of adding new system calls to the kernel. Putting new files into /proc is also discouraged, since that area i...