Date: Thu, 17 Apr 1997 11:04:36 -0600 (MDT) From: Brandon Gillespie <brandon@cold.org> To: freebsd-hackers@freeBSD.org Subject: default device names.. rc interface suggestion Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.95.970417110315.5358A-100000@cold.org>
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Ok, I don't think this got out the first time I sent it (my ethernet cable has been giving me problems--and I never received back a copy), so I'm sending it again. Sorry for the redundancy, if people get redundancy.. ------------------------------------------- Just a thought, which I think would help simplify things a touch for people administrating many different FreeBSD boxes (which I do). Basically, have /etc/devices, which is simply a map of what 'standard' devices are actually what 'real' devices, and have the VERY FIRST action of /etc/rc be to softlink all of the standard devices to the real devices? The file could be something simple like: video ttyv0 kbd ttyv0 net ed0 mouse ttyd1 [...] Then just drop the code at the top of /etc/rc which does the softlinks. The advantages of this, is that the remaining startup scripts executed could then use these 'standard' devices--so changes which must be made are kept to a minimum. In general this is not a big deal--as most people only use one or two systems. However, where I work we've "grown" quite a few FreeBSD boxes, and all have different hardware. Administrating all of them is annoying at times, as some have their ethernet device at ed0, others off de0, etc--some have serial mice, others bus, one has a PS2 mouse. I doubt most interfaces would change much, and in general something like this wouldn't be used often--but it would be VERY nice in that it would provide an abstraction layer which would help in system administration. Furthermore, it would finally shutup the linux group who whine because FreeBSD doesn't have /dev/mouse 8b Just some thoughts -Brandon Gillespie
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