Re: devfs and /proc/ide/hda

[AJ Lewis <lewis@sistina.com>]

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On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 04:10:23PM +0100, Guest section DW wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 28, 2001 at 08:52:54PM +1100, Glenn McGrath wrote:
> 
> > Im running kernel 2.4.1, I have entries like /proc/ide/hda,
> > /proc/ide/ide0/hda etc irrespective of wether im using devfs or
> > traditional device names.
> > 
> > Is always using traditional device names for /proc/ide intentional, or
> > is it something nobody has gotten around to fixing yet?
> 
> If only humans look at /proc, and they like typing long names,
> then there is no objection against changing /proc.
> As it is, however, quite a few programs look at /proc for
> information about devices. I don't think it would be a good
> idea to "fix" /proc and simultaneously break all these programs.

What it should do is change based on whether devfs is mounted or not.  It
doesn't make *any* sense to have /dev/ide/host0/foo/bar in your
/proc/partitions entries if you aren't mounting devfs.  The /proc/partitions
entry is the only way I know of for something like LVM to determine which
devices to scan for Volume Groups.  If you can't read /proc/partitions, it
has to attempt to scan all block devices it recognizes, regardless of
whether they are actually on the system or not.  This can take several
minutes.

-- 
AJ Lewis
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