Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 1 Jan 1998 09:05:00 -0600 (CST) | From | "Patrick St. Jean" <> | Subject | Re: PROPOSAL: /proc/dev (new idea) |
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On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Richard Gooch wrote: > AFAIK, what I'm proposing is different from other proposals in the > past, which involved complex user-space daemons creating device > files/symlinks on-the-fly. I think /proc/dev is much cleaner than > those proposed daemons.
May I make a suggestion? Has anyone ever looked at Solaris' device handling? They have a directory called /devices where the _REAL_ devices are (they use really ugly nasty names for them) and then the _KERNEL_ when given a -r flag will recreate the symlinks in /dev. Why couldn't we do something of that sort. But instead of nasyy, ugly names, just make /dev the special directory... Forget /dev being a real directory on the disk, just make it a "fake" one. When device blah initializes, he calls create_dev_entry(major, start_minor, count, name). Major seems self explanitory, start_minor is the first minor number, count is how many more minors from there, and name is the "base" name (cua for example). I know I'm blowing my own horn here, but it seems to me that this approach has a few things going for it. 1: No userspace daemons linking, etc. 2: Only devices you've got are seen. 3: If the pseudo-directory is done right, you'll never see people messing up tar's and creating HUGE files in /dev (pet peeve). 4: It keeps it out of /proc (see #1). I can see some drawbacks to it that I do not know how to address, such as permissions on the device files. I've got st0 at home set wide open so that I don't have to su to read a tape. But there's gotta be a way around something as trivial as that...
Just my $0.02
Happy new year!
-- +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Patrick St. Jean '97 XLH 883 psj@cgmlarson.com | | Programmer & Systems Administrator +1 713-977-4177 x115 | | Larson Software Technology http://www.cgmlarson.com | +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
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