From owner-freebsd-current Sat May 30 04:46:53 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id EAA05692 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Sat, 30 May 1998 04:46:53 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk ([195.8.133.1]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id EAA05663 for ; Sat, 30 May 1998 04:46:30 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by critter.freebsd.dk (8.8.7/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA17378; Sat, 30 May 1998 11:37:46 +0200 (CEST) To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" cc: Mike Smith , Eivind Eklund , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I see one major problem with DEVFS... In-reply-to: Your message of "Sat, 30 May 1998 00:54:25 PDT." <4005.896514865@time.cdrom.com> Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 11:37:46 +0200 Message-ID: <17376.896521066@critter.freebsd.dk> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message <4005.896514865@time.cdrom.com>, "Jordan K. Hubbard" writes: >> 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. 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 ???? 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