Re: udev and devfs - The final word

[Helge Hafting]

On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 11:01:04PM +0100, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 01:05:20PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> > Oh, _I_ always understood. You were the one that was arguing for
> > stable numbers as somehow important.
> 
> Indeed. I said "preferably stable across reboots".
> 
> > I'm just telling you that they aren't stable, and that a
> > user application that depends on their stability or
> > their uniqueness is BROKEN.
> 
> Surprise! Are you leaving POSIX? Or ditching NFS?
> Or demanding that NFS servers must never reboot?
> 
> A common Unix idiom is testing for the identity
> of two files by comparing st_ino and st_dev.
> A broken idiom?
> 
> No idea what part of our Unix heritage you now have decided to call broken.
> 

You worry about /dev over nfs, with the server booting in the middle of
such a comparison?  This can work even with randomized device numbers,
just don't let that nfs server populate the exported /dev itself.

Let the client(s) run udev, and have one /dev for each on persistent 
storage.  If the nfs server reboots it simply keeps serving /dev's
in whatever shape the clients set them up with.

Helge Hafting
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