Re: devfs rants & raves
Michael Shuey wrote:
>
> > > > But how long will that last. What I want to know is, what question
> > > > was devfs an answer to? There must have been one, right? Is it a
> >
> > > devfs is a solution in search of a problem.
> >
> > that's what I thought.
>
> devfs is _great_. Solaris has had this sort of thing (albeit with shorter
> to type names) for about a decade; it's about time Linux got something like
> it. devfs gives absolute names based on device locations. While average
> users aren't likely to see much benefit, people with truckloads of swappable
> disks, CDs, etc. need something like this to avoid having to constantly
> edit /etc/fstab between boots.
Er, how does devfs do anything different with "swappable" CDs? The
CD player's device does not change with the insertion or removal of
CDs. I can see it in the case of hot swappable scsi drives with SCA
type bus, but usually these are run as fixed id's per slot so all
you have to do is put the drives in the slots to get the /dev/sdX
designations to come out the way you want. actually i've never seen
a system that wasn't that way. and also they are usually run as
raid devices which also aren't sensitive in this way. the USB bus
could have it's own devfs like /dev/usb/whatever for people who live
for that kind of pain ~:^) But then how does that interact with the
/dev/input layer for input devices and so on?
> With devfs I can finally add a SCSI target
> in the middle of my chain and not have half my disks change their device
> names.
Um, what? So what you're sayin' is that we all have to be saddled
with the scourge that is devfs because you're too lazy to properly
set your scsi id's in order to get your /dev designations to come
out right?
> Now if network devices would adopt something similar, life would be
> beautiful. On a machine with > 8 NICs of various types figuring out
> which one probed to eth4 can be a problem, especially if some of 'em
> are hot-swappable and not always present...
OK, you've convinced me. Zzzzzzzzz
Just kidding. SCSI lun's are almost never used except in juke boxes
and possibly certain kinds of tape drives. Still doesn't change
anything. Am I missing something? It will be very embarrassing if
I am.
a
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