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Date: Tue, 3 Aug 2004 09:17:18 +0700
From: Alexey Dokuchaev <danfe@nsu.ru>
To: John Baldwin <jhb@freebsd.org>
Message-ID: <20040803021718.GA5460@regency.nsu.ru>
References: <200408011140.i71BesOt070889@repoman.freebsd.org>
	<200408021600.00339.jhb@FreeBSD.org>
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cc: cvs-src@freebsd.org
cc: src-committers@freebsd.org
cc: Mark Murray <markm@freebsd.org>
cc: cvs-all@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/alpha/alpha mem.c src/sys/alpha/conf
	GENERIC src/sys/alpha/include memdev.h src/sys/amd64/amd64 io.c
	mem.c src/sys/amd64/conf GENERIC NOTES src/sys/amd64/include
	iodev.h memdev.h src/sys/conf NOTES files files.alpha files.amd64
	...
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On Mon, Aug 02, 2004 at 04:00:00PM -0400, John Baldwin wrote:
> On Sunday 01 August 2004 07:40 am, Mark Murray wrote:
> > markm       2004-08-01 11:40:54 UTC
> >
> >   FreeBSD src repository
> >
> >   Modified files:
> >     sys/alpha/alpha      mem.c
> >     sys/alpha/conf       GENERIC
> >     sys/amd64/amd64      mem.c
> >     sys/amd64/conf       GENERIC NOTES
> >     sys/conf             NOTES files files.alpha files.amd64
> >                          files.i386 files.ia64 files.pc98
> >                          files.sparc64
> > [ ... ]
> 
> Why in the world are /dev/null and /dev/zero optional?  /dev/[k]mem 
> and /dev/io I can accept for those with uber-high security paranoia, but I 
> can't think of any good reason to have a kernel without /dev/null 
> and /dev/zero.  To me it seems that this creates way more foot shooting 
> potential than benefit.  It's one thing to have device drivers for hardware 
> that may or may not be present optional, but /dev/null and /dev/zero do not 
> fall into that case.

OTOH, if someone wants to build mega-tight kernel image with everything
possible taken out by modules, modularizing /dev/null and /dev/zero
might make some sence.  We already have /dev/random as a module anyways.

./danfe