From owner-freebsd-current Sat May 30 00:54:22 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id AAA13581 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Sat, 30 May 1998 00:54:22 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from time.cdrom.com (root@time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA13564 for ; Sat, 30 May 1998 00:54:18 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@time.cdrom.com) Received: from time.cdrom.com (jkh@localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id AAA04009; Sat, 30 May 1998 00:54:25 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jkh@time.cdrom.com) To: Mike Smith cc: Eivind Eklund , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I see one major problem with DEVFS... In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 29 May 1998 23:26:48 PDT." <199805300626.XAA01190@antipodes.cdrom.com> Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 00:54:25 -0700 Message-ID: <4005.896514865@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > Because it ain't mounted anyhere. Think: user says: > > # rm /dev/foo0 > > # mknod /dev/foo0 c ??? > > What are they going to supply for the dev_t? The numbers are dynamic, > so there's no possible reference to them. Even if they weren't, > there's no guarantee they'd be able to guess them anyway. 1. Of course the numbers aren't dynamic - for backwards-compatibility to even begin to work at the mknod-level, you'd have to preserve the old assignments. 2. The mknod operation may be done by something like sysinstall or even the old MAKEDEV script - the user doesn't necessarily have to know, it just needs to work even if the script is creating some custom set of aliases, like "/dev/floppy" or "/dev/cdrom", etc. That's why I'm sticking so stubbornly to the idea of preserving any residual meaning for major/minors at all. :) - Jordan To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message