> David Weinehall wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, 5 Oct 1999, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> >
> > > David Weinehall wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > That is one way of doing it; IMO a very good way because it lets you
> > > > > have policy in user space.
> > > >
> > > > Oh? And what kind of image of how devfs does things do you have then?
> > > >
> > > > This is how devfs works. The kernel part of devfs informs devfsd of the
> > > > changes (what devices need to be created/removed), and devfsd nicely
> > > > carries out its chores. User-space policy and persistent access-rights are
> > > > there for you.
> > > >
> > >
> > > ... in which case you don't need devfs at all.
> >
> > And how will you inform the daemon that new devices need to be
> > created/removed?
> >
>
> By a pipe or socket. Doing it via a filesystem is broken anyway, since
> you need a message -- not a layout.
>
If we do take any type of daemon-oriented approach, then the daemon may,
in fact, want to know layout. Certainly when we present this information
to the user, layout might be relevant (i.e. "USB disk device #5 failure,"
vs. "USB disk device on the 3rd port of the 1st hub has failed"). We need
access to the topological information.
Heck, I might want different behavior between the case where I unplug all
devices individually, or if I unplug a hub (and thus all it's associated
devices) instead. Specifically, I'm thinking about laptops in this case,
where the user is using a single cable to a USB hub to attach a multitude
of devices at once. Under these circumstances, USB Ethernet driver might
want to use a static IP... otherwise, we're probably at the office and
DHCP is the right answer.
Matt
-- Matthew Dharm InterNIC: MDD94 Engineer, Qualcomm, Inc. Cell: (619) 890-6943 Home: mdharm@one-eyed-alien.net Home: (858) 689-1908 Work: mdharm@qualcomm.com Work: (858) 651-7649 Beep: page-matt@one-eyed-alien.net Beep: (858) 621-8155Dudes! May the Open Source be with you. -- Eric S. Raymond User Friendly, 12/3/1998
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