Re: [2.4.0] migration to devfs

[Stefan Nobis <stefan-ml@snobis.de>]

Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net> writes:

> instead of /dev/hda1 or /dev/wd0a whenever i need to do anything
> related to raw devices is a performance improvment.  nor is writing
> huge kludgy initscripts or bloated daemons just so i can do:

I can't see why a daemon about 30k in size is bloated.

See it this way: The old way to manage devices is with major/minor node
numbers. There are not much free numbers these days and if we put the system
to 32 Bit numbers or the like, the kernel will be very much more bloated than
that small daemon in user-mode could ever be bloated.

One other IMO very good argument is, that with the old system the list of
numbers is used at two different locations, one in the kernel and one in /dev
or MAKEDEV scripts. With devfs there is now only one list in the kernel. (Not
to mention that numbers are given in a very chaotic way to devices.)

Last but not least without /dev being an ordinary directory one is much more
flexible with the root-dir. It's much more simple now to make / read-only
without the need vor a ramdisk and the like.

And at least i'm very pleased that now i can have a look in /dev and see
what's really there.

By the way i love dynamically managed resources and i don't like the idea that
resources are managed statically -- only think about USB.

> chgrp wheel /dev/somedevice
> chmod 660 /dev/somedevice 
> 
> and have it stick.  (past reboots)

With devfsd this is also very simple possible.

-- 
Until the next mail...,
Stefan.