From owner-freebsd-hackers Sun Apr 27 21:16:19 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id VAA20035 for hackers-outgoing; Sun, 27 Apr 1997 21:16:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from time.cdrom.com (time.cdrom.com [204.216.27.226]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id VAA20022 for ; Sun, 27 Apr 1997 21:16:16 -0700 (PDT) Received: from time.cdrom.com (localhost.cdrom.com [127.0.0.1]) by time.cdrom.com (8.8.5/8.6.9) with ESMTP id VAA09165; Sun, 27 Apr 1997 21:15:41 -0700 (PDT) To: dennis cc: "Daniel O'Callaghan" , Sales , hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: pci probes with multiple "units" (MORE) In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 27 Apr 1997 21:26:58 EDT." <3.0.32.19970427212656.00bc7980@etinc.com> Date: Sun, 27 Apr 1997 21:15:40 -0700 Message-ID: <9163.862200940@time.cdrom.com> From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > The driver name should tell you what kind of hardware you have, as > it the unix *way*....with linux you dont have a damn clue what you > have in there. Well, actually, some people have suggested that the best approach would a hybrid of the two approaches: If you want to see what you've got, the boot messages and/or `ifconfig -a' will show you what you have in the classic "unix way" (or "unix *way*" :-). If, on the other hand, you could really give a damn about it and just wanted to write an rc script which brought up "the ethernet card", be that a 3COM 3c595 or a DEC DC21041, then you should also have a "symbolic" name for each device like "eth0, eth1, .." and so on. The symbolic name wouldn't show up in ifc chain, being implemented instead by ifconfig as a sort of alias, and so nothing else would be confused by this (save, perhaps, the system administrator who suddenly encounters this for the first time and is seriously puzzled at this phantom device which just magically works :-). Jordan