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SubjectRe: devlinks: an alternative to devfs
Michael Elizabeth Chastain writes:
> Hi Richard,
>
> > Er, but then GNU tar can't back up /dev properly, because it doesn't
> > know about the magic bit. When you restore your FS those entries
> > become ordinary symlinks.
>
> That's a distinct risk. I admit this is kludgy. I was thinking
> about using the sticky bit, or some other 'unused bit' that is already
> within the set of bits that tar would backup.

So for every filesystem type that /dev could be mounted on, you need
to fiddle the handling of symlinks. Some people may still use minix,
and there's also isofs...
Unless you're planning on hacking the VFS itself? I think I can
predict Linus' reaction to that <duck>.

It also doesn't address the problem of booting off an NTFS root
filesystem: character and block devices aren't supported, nor are
symlinks (I think).

> > # mount -t devfs none /gaol/dev
> > # cd /gaol/dev
> > # rm -f lp{0,1,2} sd{a,b,c,d,e} hd{a,b,c,d} ...
>
> Hang on, I think you are missing the point of my use case. Suppose
> that root does the above. Then an hour later, root does:
>
> # insmod lp
>
> ... *after* the gaol is up and running.

So? The unlink() will cause a delete entry to be maintained in the
internal database.

Regards,

Richard....

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