Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sat, 30 May 1998 11:37:46 +0200
From:      Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@critter.freebsd.dk>
To:        "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@time.cdrom.com>
Cc:        Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>, current@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: I see one major problem with DEVFS... 
Message-ID:  <17376.896521066@critter.freebsd.dk>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 30 May 1998 00:54:25 PDT." <4005.896514865@time.cdrom.com> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
In message <4005.896514865@time.cdrom.com>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" writes:
>> Because it ain't mounted anyhere.  Think: user says:
>> 
>> # rm /dev/foo0
>> <expletive>
>> # 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.

No, the medium to long term goal is to kill dev_t and mknod entirely,
they are a hideous kludge and they are scheduled for demolition.
(The process will take slightly longer than 2 minutes, thank you!)

Think for a moment about this parallel:

	rm -rf /proc/125
	<expletive>
	????

Right ?

Removing /dev/lpt0 doesn't make sense, it doesn't remove the driver,
it doesn't attach from the hardware, it merely removes the namesticker
from the mailbox.

Devfs is synthetic and maybe we shouldn't even allow removes in the
first place but a whiteout/undelete solution is the "POLA" choice.

Alternatively devfs could allow mknod, but ignore the major/minor
numbers given and just "DTRT", that would work also after we have
killed dev_t.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp             FreeBSD coreteam member
phk@FreeBSD.ORG               "Real hackers run -current on their laptop."
"ttyv0" -- What UNIX calls a $20K state-of-the-art, 3D, hi-res color terminal

To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message



Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?17376.896521066>