From owner-freebsd-current Wed Mar 20 16:24:35 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id QAA17108 for current-outgoing; Wed, 20 Mar 1996 16:24:35 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id QAA17096 for ; Wed, 20 Mar 1996 16:24:28 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id RAA28244; Wed, 20 Mar 1996 17:14:31 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199603210014.RAA28244@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: DEVFS vs "regular /dev" To: davidg@Root.COM Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 17:14:31 -0700 (MST) Cc: terry@lambert.org, julian@ref.tfs.com, scrappy@ki.net, current@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199603210010.QAA03902@Root.COM> from "David Greenman" at Mar 20, 96 04:10:05 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >So you don't need a mounted root to have a mounted /dev, of course! > > That's silly. The root filesystem is mounted long before /dev would be, and > as Julian points out, /dev is not required for this (in the same way that /dev > is not required when it is disk resident - you'd have a chicken and egg > problem as /dev *is* on the root filesystem). Well, the alternative is a (possible) mis-recognition of root ("Can't mount root"), which I think it would fix as well (making the mount independent of its location in the hierarchy would also fix that one). > >This makes it possible to remount root r/w without unmounting the > >devfs (and so still needing /dev). > > Remounting r/w is not precluded by having /dev mounted (or any other > filesystem). Remonting r/w involves changing mount flags, nothing more. Well, then it isn't a real issue for that; never mind. I was going down my old "objections to devfs" list and the workarounds for each one of them. The real reason I want it, is, as I've said before, nomadic computing. If a resource is available, it doesn't matter which one it is if you can make them identical. I'd still like to address resources by resource name instead of machine name. I'll give my standard example: a portable computer with a 2Mb/S IR interface that wants to access locally available identical resources from the office server in two offices. For instance, floating licenses for products. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.