Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 18 Jun 1999 18:37:51 -0400 | Subject | Re: UUIDs (and devfs and major/minor numbers) | From | tytso@mit ... |
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From: o.r.c@p.e.l.l.p.o.r.t.l.a.n.d.o.r.u.s (david parsons) Date: 17 Jun 1999 17:41:19 -0700
The namespace for /dev was dictated a long time ago, and you vary from that namespace at your own risk.
I think herein lies some of the confusion about devfs vs. procfs, et.al.
The files in /dev fall into two categories. Some were indeed dictated a long time ago, and indeed you can't change them without causing all osrts of problems with programs and shell scripts which have these names hard-coded into them. Examples of such names include /dev/tty, /dev/null, and so on. I would argue that procfs falls in the same category, since most (but certainly not all) of the usage of the proc filesystem, especially the non-process related aspects of the proc filesystem, are used by programs. (For example: free, ps, etc.)
There is however second class of files which live in /dev, and for those files the names are really up to the system administrator, and are a matter between the whims of the system adminsitator and the various configuration files which list those devices: /etc/inittab, /etc/fstab, etc. Examples of such device names include names for disk drives, tapes, cd-roms, and ttys, and so on. Indeed, this is why devfs can use device names such as /dev/dsk/... instead of /dev/hda1 without causing all hell to break loose.
While there are some naming conventions which most people subscribe to for these second class of device files/names in /dev, they are by no means fixed. And it's for these classes of device names, where I believe hardcoding a new naming convention into the kernel is especially a bad idea.
And so again, *yes*, devfs is different from procfs. One can be in favour of the latter without being in favour of the former, and this is why.
- Ted
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