RE: PUBLIC CHALLENGE: (was RE: devfs again, (was RE: USB device a

Shawn Leas (SLEAS@videoupdate.com)
Fri, 8 Oct 1999 13:32:41 -0500


From: Horst von Brand [mailto:vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl]
Subject: Re: PUBLIC CHALLENGE: (was RE: devfs again, (was RE: USB device
allocation))

>even much earlier). AFAIU, glibc is also prepared for a larger dev_t. The
>big problem is doing it, as it will break _everything_.

Thanks for agruing my poitn that we should through away
major/minor pairs.

>> sda, sdb, and sdc, and you remove sdb... Whoops, sdc is sdb!!! Not
>> with devfs, it addresses devices by hardware address when applicable,
>> and provides symlinks to the oldstyle names like /dev/sdb.
>You are just shifting one naming convention to another one, that is as bad
>or worse. No win there.

Not really, the only "hardware path" to a device from userland
is serially addressing driver/driver-node by major/minor pair,
which serially address the devices. This is why sda and hda
have the names they have.

>> I'm not going to go into how difficult PCMCIA, USB, et all is w/out
>> something as elegant as devfs.

>OK, this is the only argument you've got left. If you won't go into it, it
>surely means that it isn't really that solid. Case closed.

Big fat LIE.

-Shawn

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