From owner-freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jun 4 06:52:19 2003 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id C559937B401 for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2003 06:52:19 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fledge.watson.org (fledge.watson.org [204.156.12.50]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0FAF843FBD for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2003 06:52:19 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from fledge.watson.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by fledge.watson.org (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id h54DpAOn053183 for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:51:10 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Received: from localhost (robert@localhost)h54DpA6S053179 for ; Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:51:10 -0400 (EDT) (envelope-from robert@fledge.watson.org) Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 09:51:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson X-Sender: robert@fledge.watson.org To: ports@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: Re: linux_base and devfs on 5.x: what to do about character devices X-BeenThere: freebsd-ports@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting software to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 13:52:20 -0000 On Wed, 4 Jun 2003, Robert Watson wrote: > It was recently brought to my attention that some users of FreeBSD have > somewhat populated /compat/linux/dev trees with hard-coded character > device entries in there. Often, this seems to occur on upgrded 4.x > machines running on 5.x The problem with this is that we're in the > throes of gradually moving away from hard-coded major device numbers, so > those entries will grow increasingly inaccurate over time. I'd like to > find out a bit more about how /dev is managed in linux compat land, what > ports do special things with it, and how we can make sure that the linux > compat code runs without any hitches on 5.2-RELEASE when we go -STABLE. > > >From a 5.x technical perspective, any ideal solution would avoid any > character device nodes anywhere outside of /dev, so that would mean > avoiding any entries in a linux-compat-specific dev, or making sure they > are symlinks to the real /dev, or the like. Feedback very welcome! Just to briefly follow up (sorry, should have been in the earlier e-mail), linux_base installs a null node, which can probably be ommitted if the lookup properly falls back to the real system /dev. Last I checked, vmware depended on rtc, which generated a pseudo-device (and possibly a node for it?), and on the vmnet bits, which are basically if_tap, and hence possibly another node. I'm guessing all of these could simply be "if not -current", or alternatively "make symlinks".y Robert N M Watson FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects robert@fledge.watson.org Network Associates Laboratories