Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 27 Nov 1997 14:19:30 +0100 (MET) | From | Rik van Riel <> | Subject | Re: TTY changes to 2.1.65 |
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On Wed, 26 Nov 1997, Richard Masoner wrote:
> > The implementation should be fairly simple... all syscalls to devices > > with the "generic" major would get multiplexed (based upon their > > minor) to the "real" major handler, > > Nice idea; unforunately the number of bits in the minor number is > already a limiting factor in Linux.
We could implement /dev in the same way we implement /proc... Device drivers can register/unregister their device files in /dev and they get assigned a 'device number' for each device they allocate (no need for major/minor numbers)
For devices that are compiled-in some script in /etc/rc.d could change the permissions to the wanted ones. Loadable modules could get the dev_perm=0600 or whatever as a command-line option (from /etc/conf.modules).
This would probably cost us 10 to 20 k of kernel-mem, but that's a small price to pay (even on a 4M machine) for making things _work_ in all circumstances...
No need to ever assign major/minor numbers again would also help people who built a custom device driver or made a kernel-patch for some driver (without registering a major with Linus).
comments wanted,
Rik.
---------- Send Linux memory-management wishes to me: I'm currently looking for something to hack...
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