From owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Thu Oct 9 08:22:17 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 78AA016A4B3 for ; Thu, 9 Oct 2003 08:22:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from mailhub.fokus.fraunhofer.de (mailhub.fokus.fraunhofer.de [193.174.154.14]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F31B243F85 for ; Thu, 9 Oct 2003 08:22:15 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de) Received: from beagle (beagle [193.175.132.100])h99FLv321403; Thu, 9 Oct 2003 17:21:57 +0200 (MEST) Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2003 17:21:57 +0200 (CEST) From: Harti Brandt To: David Gilbert In-Reply-To: <16261.27258.563735.274938@canoe.dclg.ca> Message-ID: <20031009171829.Y980@beagle.fokus.fraunhofer.de> References: <3F8279C5.9070300@ecsd.com> <200310071929.30826.doconnor@gsoft.com.au> <16261.27258.563735.274938@canoe.dclg.ca> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org cc: ecsd Subject: Re: cannot create partition entries for /dev/ad3 X-BeenThere: freebsd-current@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Discussions about the use of FreeBSD-current List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 09 Oct 2003 15:22:17 -0000 On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, David Gilbert wrote: DG>>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel O'Connor writes: DG> DG>Daniel> The only reason most people will ever touch /dev is to either DG>Daniel> make devices (hence no longer necessary with devfs), or change DG>Daniel> permissions. The later is more difficult with devfs, but IMHO DG>Daniel> the tradeoff is worthwhile. DG> DG>This brings me to my (small) beef with devfs. When you invoke an DG>abstraction, a metric of the usefulness of that abstraction is how DG>well the abstractions metaphors map onto the target system's DG>metaphors. DG> DG>So as a filesystem, devfs does will by replicating the average DG>person's view of should be in /dev ... subject to what devices are DG>actually found... DG> DG>But filesystems also have persistence. In the trivial case, the DG>persistence of the object (say ... a disk) preserved the filesystems DG>node. But if I walk into /dev and change the permissions on a node, DG>this persists only until the next reboot. Filesystems not necessarily have persistance. Although it would be fancy to be able to backup and restore /proc or /portal. Many devices (especially with all this hot-plugable stuff today) are not persistant, why should their representation be? harti -- harti brandt, http://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/research/cc/cats/employees/hartmut.brandt/private brandt@fokus.fraunhofer.de, harti@freebsd.org