Agreed. Getting rid of devfs (the dynamic filesystem) makes devfs (the
concept of dynamic /dev) more acceptable to more punters, and honestly
doesn't lose all that much functionality. Modules contact devfsd when
they need a node. The daemon creates/deletes nodes as needed on a real
filesystem using the policy laid out via /etc/devfsd.conf.
- The /dev directory is updated in user space, not kernel space.
- You can just turn off the daemon, old behaviour is restored.
- Kernel modifications are minimal (changes to init/cleanup_module).
- Major/minors can be assigned dynamically by drivers, avoids GUID.
- Topology rules for USB can be over-engineered totally in user space.
- The policy for naming nodes moves to user space, hpa is happy.
- Persistence of nodes is maintained by the filesystem, tso is happy.
- Devfs gets into the kernel, everyone else in the world is happy.
You lose the ability to run a Linux system without a filesystem which
knows about major/minor numbers. Only a tiny number of people are going
to complain about this (David?).
--
Nathan Hand - Chirp Web Design - http://www.chirp.com.au/ - $e^{i\pi}+1 = 0$
Phone: +61 2 6230 1871 Fax: +61 2 6230 1515 E-mail: nathanh@chirp.com.au
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