From owner-freebsd-current Wed Oct 2 1:54:18 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3CE0B37B401 for ; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 01:54:17 -0700 (PDT) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (critter.freebsd.dk [212.242.86.163]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 698A443E42 for ; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 01:54:16 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) Received: from critter.freebsd.dk (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by critter.freebsd.dk (8.12.6/8.12.6) with ESMTP id g928rs0U085979; Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:53:54 +0200 (CEST) (envelope-from phk@critter.freebsd.dk) To: Bruce Evans Cc: Sheldon Hearn , current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: HEADSUP! GEOM as default in 5 days... In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 02 Oct 2002 18:41:20 +1000." <20021002180920.P4712-100000@gamplex.bde.org> Date: Wed, 02 Oct 2002 10:53:54 +0200 Message-ID: <85978.1033548834@critter.freebsd.dk> From: Poul-Henning Kamp Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG In message <20021002180920.P4712-100000@gamplex.bde.org>, Bruce Evans writes: >This could have been done without devfs by mapping names of special files >to numeric indexes in the kernel. Putting the index in the inode is mainly >an efficiency hack. Numeric indexes work quite well in the kernel (better >than pointers in the current implementation, since most drivers prefer to >work with numbers and call the inefficient replacements of the major() and >minor macros a lot). This is actually not true any more. An increasing number of drivers derive their softc pointer directly from the dev_t without the detour over compile-time-fixed-sized arrays of possible unit numbers. >> In the meantime, DEVFS is the best I could come up with which makes >> life simpler for users, developers and administrators, and still >> retains as many of the flaws as we want to keep. > >For me, it has saved about 10 minutes of admin time and cost a few >working weeks of development time so far. I don't think you are anywhere near the mean, or the median for that matter, of FreeBSD users. -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message