[snip]
> Well, put simply, (1) it's trying to solve a problem in the kernel for
> which parts can just as easily be solved in user-space; it puts too much
> policy and naming issues in the kernel. (2) The hacks that you need so
> that you can save the user/group ownership and permissions are too ugly
> to contemplate. (3) Device inodes really do need major and minor device
> numbers; programs do look at them, and POSIX guarantees that they exist.
>
>
> The one problem which devfs is trying to solve which I think is valid is
> the question of device partitions, particularly with SCSI. So the
> solution that I'm working on is a small module which can be installed on
> any kernel (doesn't require a massive kernel patch), which scans all of
> the block devices looking for filesystem superblocks/labels for a wide
> variety of filesystems, and creates a hierarchy of device files inside
> /proc for those filesystems.
>
> Hence you would see block devices with names such as
> /proc/volumes/ext2fs/ted_root, and /proc/volumes/ntfs/NT5.0, and so on,
> and you can simply put those names in your /etc/fstab file. This way,
> you're guaranteed to get the right partitions mounted even if someone
> inserts a new disk.
>
> This is much simpler than putting all devices in /dev into a synthentic
> filesystem such as devfs, which I continue to think is overkill and
> unnecessary. Since it's a loadable kernel module, distributions that
> want to use it don't need to install a patch to the 2.2 kernel, but they
> can just load the module.
[snip]
Finally! A little fresh air! As a lowly user of Linux, this looks very
much like a KISS solution.
Thanks Ted! I was not looking forward to remembering ... umm now what
was that name again. :-)
Bob
-- +---------------------------------------------------------------+ | Bob Taylor Email: brtaylor@inreach.com | |---------------------------------------------------------------| | Like the ad says, at 300 dpi you can tell she's wearing a | | swimsuit. At 600 dpi you can tell it's wet. At 1200 dpi you | | can tell it's painted on. I suppose at 2400 dpi you can tell | | if the paint is giving her a rash. (So says Joshua R. Poulson)| +---------------------------------------------------------------+
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