Re: udev device naming policy concerns
Tore Anderson <tore@debian.org> writes:
> * Tollef Fog Heen
>
> > I think you are overestimating the problems. I used to run without
> > any compat symlinks, just devfs, and apart from the fact that you have
> > to fix inittab, it mostly Just Worked.
>
> When I experimented with devfs and attempted to run without the symlinks
> my system broke down to the point of not booting fully, due to the fact
> that the devices where my system partitions was supposed to be located
> (/dev/hda1 and such) wasn't available any longer. After having fixed
inittab and fstab need change, freshly installed systems would get that
automatically.
For updates the udev package could check for the existing naming
scheme and keep using that.
> that I just found that many other things was broken, such as for instance
> XMMS (due to the missing /dev/dsp and /dev/mixer), my floppy drive
xmms -> configure -> options -> preference
Output plugin -> configure -> use alternate device
Same procedure as getting xxms to use the 2nd soundcard.
> was inaccessible (no /dev/fd0 either), and so on for almost every piece
/etc/mtools.conf
> of software using device nodes directly. It surprises me to hear that
> you didn't run into such problems, but then again, I did my testing for
> quite some time ago - things may have changed since then.
Its all just a little bit of configuring. Most software gets it right
on its own, some needs some help. The only software that I use that
has a problem is vmware and guess why its not fixed already.
> Anyway, my complaint isn't that it will be technically impossible to
> build a system exclusively using non-standard device names, be it
> devfs names or something else entirely, but rather that this attempt to
> do so right now is undesireable and serves no good purpose.
Its way over due to change it. If your using a debian kernel check
/proc/partitions and wonder about the strange names there. Quite some
software is getting confused by that. So the world with old names is
not all nice and shiny.
> The current naming scheme is, after all, a universally accepted and
> ubiquitous standard, one which has been formalized by the Free Standards
> Group, and one which no major player in the GNU/Linux arena seem intent
> on changing in the foreseeable future. I believe we should have a very
> compelling rationale at the table before deciding to stray from it.
Then Debian has to be one of the distributions imrpoving it. :)
MfG
Goswin
Reply to: