[Bug 554172] Re: system services not starting at boot

[Scott James Remnant]

Another point to consider (I discussed this with a few people here at
LinuxCon):

open() is supposed to be an inherently blocking system call, just like
connect(), creat(), etc.  If the kernel hasn't finished hanging up the
tty from last time, it's *okay* for the subsequent open() to block for a
while while it hangs up the tty and reinitializes it.  The app will be
expecting that.

If the app calls open() with the O_NONBLOCK flag, which it accepts today
already, then it's a non-blocking open - and in that case it would be
acceptable for the kernel to fail the open with the EAGAIN or
EWOULDBLOCK error - *NOT* EIO.

(not EIO because it turns out that that error code is already returned
in some cases to indicate filesystem corruption or disk error, neither
of which are transient and acceptable to loop on)

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system services not starting at boot
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/554172
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