From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Apr 19 03:54:19 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) id DAA15884 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 19 Apr 1995 03:54:19 -0700 Received: from ref.tfs.com (ref.tfs.com [140.145.254.251]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.10/8.6.6) with ESMTP id DAA15878 for ; Wed, 19 Apr 1995 03:54:18 -0700 Received: (from julian@localhost) by ref.tfs.com (8.6.8/8.6.6) id DAA08184; Wed, 19 Apr 1995 03:54:11 -0700 From: Julian Elischer Message-Id: <199504191054.DAA08184@ref.tfs.com> Subject: Re: [DEVFS] your opinions sought! To: pritc003@maroon.tc.umn.edu (Mike Pritchard) Date: Wed, 19 Apr 1995 03:54:11 -0700 (PDT) Cc: rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com, hackers@freefall.cdrom.com In-Reply-To: <199504190842.DAA04273@mpp.com> from "Mike Pritchard" at Apr 19, 95 03:42:28 am Content-Type: text Content-Length: 715 Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > > I have a question: what does the devfs file system get me, and > why would I ever want to use it? From what I've seen so far, it just > looks like a complicated way to access my /dev/* files. > You might want to use it if it always had the right major and minor numbers for devices that were dynamically added in.. one time it might be major 35 and the next time you boot, it could be major 37 because you loaded the new WIZBANG driver as well. it also means that disk slices can be shown only when they actually exist on the disk.. /dev is never wrong..because each entry is set up by the very driver that runs it.. (plus lots of other reasons to do with 'upcoming' stuff.) think 'dynamic' julian