[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Locking of serial devices and devfs



According to Cyrille Chepelov:
> Le jeu, jun 21, 2001, à 03:56:05 +0200, Miquel van Smoorenburg a écrit:
> 
> > > devfs is all about loosing that major/minor <troll>nonsense</troll>.
> > 
> > Sure, *but* even on devfs, a device node has a unique major/minor.
> > It might be allocated dynamically and be only valid until the next
> > reboot, but it's perfectly usuable for locking.
> 
> ... until one uses a lean version of devfs, which doesn't have these
> numbers, but just uses the pathname instead. Why design for a fragile system
> ? Device names aren't going away.

Neither are device majors/minors unless you want to give up compatibility
with other Unix (like) systems or perhaps even POSIX completely, at
which point the kernel probably won't be called 'Linux' anymore.

A _lot_ of things currently depend on major/minor numbers in /dev,
userlevel stuff such as the 'tty' program. And these programs aren't
going to go away soon.

Mike.



Reply to: