Re: DEVFSv50 and /dev/fb? (or /dev/fb/? ???)

Richard Gooch (Richard.Gooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU)
Thu, 6 Aug 1998 12:05:15 +1000


Andrea Arcangeli writes:
> On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Richard Gooch wrote:
>
> >> You really don' t understand that the inode lookup time is not an issue.
> >> Please really stop using it as and argument in favor of devfs.
> >
> >How long does it take to lookup a million inodes? This is not
> >significant?
>
> I think that your /dev/ directory was corrupted.

No. I don't have such a huge /dev. But read the devfs FAQ about a
fully populated /dev which supports all possible SCSI devices. That is
8 million inodes (when we finally break the 16 SCSI disc limit, we'll
have to look at the many inodes issue). This clearly shows that a
fully populated /dev is not workable. Some kind of solution is needed
for this, be it devfs or scsidev. Scsidev only solves it for SCSI, it
doesn't fix USB, for example.

> andrea@dragon:~$ ls /dev/ | wc -l
> 1764
>
> The /dev/ inode lookup time is so ridicolous that I am used to use
> symlinks in /dev/ (note that also many of other unix use ton of symlinks).

8 million inodes for a fully populated /dev. Really.

Regards,

Richard....

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