Re: [RFC] devfs API

[Rudmer van Dijk <rudmer@legolas.dynup.net>]

On Tuesday 12 November 2002 09:04, Theodore Ts'o wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 08:49:22PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:
> > The only way I'll use devfs is
> > 	* on a separate testbox devoid of network interfaces
> > 	* with no users
> > 	* with no data - disk periodically populated from image on CD.
> > 
> > And that's regardless of that cleanup - fixing the interface doesn't solve
> > the internal races, so...
> 
> Hi Al,
> 
> It's good that you're trying to clean up the devfs code, but...
> 
> How many people are actually using devfs these days?  I don't like it
> myself, and I've had to add a fair amount of hair to fsck's
> mount-by-label/uuid code to deal with interesting cases such as
> kernels where devfs is configured, but not actually mounted (it
> changes what /proc/partitions exports).  So I'm one of those who have
> never looked all that kindly on devfs, which shouldn't come as a
> surprise to most folks.

well I like devfs, in the sense that it is really easy to see what you can 
use in /dev. Before i used devfs it could be quite difficult since there were 
so much nodes and symlinks in /dev and many have cryptic names... and 
sometimes the entries i needed simply were not there so i had to find the 
right major/minor numbers to create them...

from a user point of view it is better to keep it because it could really 
simplify a users life except ide should be just in discs as hdX and not as 
/dev/ide/hostN/busX/targetY/lunZ/disc ...

> 
> In any case, if there aren't all that many people using devfs, I can
> think of a really easy way in which we could simplify and clean up its
> API by slimming it down by 100%......

if the code is really that horrible, then maybe that is the best solution but 
again i like the concept.

	Rudmer