Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 08 Oct 1999 00:30:40 +0200 | From | Martin Dalecki <> | Subject | Re: devfs again, (was RE: USB device allocation) |
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Stephen Frost wrote: > > On Thu, 7 Oct 1999, Horst von Brand wrote: > > > This is _horrible_. Suddenly there are files whose attributes aren't fixed > > by chmod(1)/chown(1), but by a magic file. > > > > Again. The way Unix is designed, permanent information about files resides > > in the filesystem. Another basic Unix design premise is that devices are > > files. So their attributes reside in the filesystem. Anything else breaks > > much ("tar cf dev.tar /dev", ..., "tar xf dev.tar /dev" doesn't work > > anymore (but it looks like it does!); can't dump/restore /dev; ...). It > > might also have _very_ serious security implications (what if the magic > > devfs.conf file goes missing, or is clobbered?) > > Agreed, this can be a problem, hence my thoughts on a set of /dev > files that reside on the filesystem pointing to /devices, which can be > thought of as basically the same thing as major,minor pairs, w/ the > exception that they are names (And as such much more scalable, and often > easier to understand). Unfortunately, I don't know enough about how > devices work to know if something like this is even possible. > I suppose you could take away /devices and change whatever you have > to to make major,minor pairs names instead... Then have a userspace daemon > that can do what it wants to the files, or they can be modified by hand. > Of course, this looses us the (debated) advantage of having /dev being in > memory instead of on disk. > Then I ask you, how can a script find out specific information > about what hardware exists on the system? Run through everything in /dev? > If /dev is fully populated, this could take a while... /proc gives us > some data currently, though it's not in a very standard fashion, and > currently would be hard for a script or program to parse out. > Curious, what are your feelings on /proc, anyhow?
Don't you just realize that all the twised symlinc blah blah proposals about devfs you are doing here are a sure sign of a basically bad design? If you don't beleve then just try to explain this all to a fresh new linux user.
--Marcin
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