From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Nov 27 11:53:06 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id LAA08062 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 27 Nov 1996 11:53:06 -0800 (PST) Received: from gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov (gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov [137.75.131.181]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id LAA08054 for ; Wed, 27 Nov 1996 11:52:54 -0800 (PST) Received: from cardinal.fsl.noaa.gov (daemon@cardinal.fsl.noaa.gov [137.75.60.101]) by gatekeeper.fsl.noaa.gov (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id TAA21700; Wed, 27 Nov 1996 19:52:32 GMT Received: from auk.fsl.noaa.gov by cardinal.fsl.noaa.gov with SMTP (1.40.112.3/16.2) id AA061484351; Wed, 27 Nov 1996 19:52:31 GMT Message-Id: <329C9C36.2A04@fsl.noaa.gov> Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 12:53:26 -0700 From: Sean Kelly Organization: NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (X11; I; HP-UX B.10.10 9000/725) Mime-Version: 1.0 To: Christoph Kukulies Cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.freebsd.org Subject: Re: devfs - for what is it useful References: <199611271912.UAA07098@gilberto.physik.rwth-aachen.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Christoph Kukulies wrote: > What is it good for? I've never used DEVFS myself (yet---still running 2.1.5), but I think it fixes a specific problem (which I believe is even cited in _The Unix Hater's Handbook_): You never have to run the MAKEDEV script again. (Heck, you won't even need a MAKEDEV script.) Having entries in /dev for devices which aren't in your kernel is silly. Not having entries in /dev for devices you do have is even more silly. DEVFS fixes this. Also, the /dev entries can appear and disappear automatically for LKMs. Pretty spiffy stuff. -- Sean Kelly NOAA Forecast Systems Laboratory kelly@fsl.noaa.gov Boulder Colorado USA http://www-sdd.fsl.noaa.gov/~kelly/