Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 10 Oct 1999 18:17:57 -0400 | From | "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <> | Subject | Re: PUBLIC CHALLENGE: (was RE: devfs again, (was RE: USB device a lloc ation) ) |
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Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 07:47:10 -0400 (EDT) From: Stephen Frost <sfrost@ns.snowman.net>
Err, no, /proc/devices isn't a filesystem, it's a FILE. The idea being it's a list of major,minor's that are in the system, or perhaps something like:
+8,0 +8,1 +8,2 +8,4 -8,1 +8,3
Where a proggie can then read the file and determine what is currently in the system, and by watching the file can see what devices are added/removed. NOTE: This is just a random thought on the layout, it prolly has lots of problems so don't think I'm suggesting it as a permanent solution.
We'd want to put more information in /proc/devices than just the file. Having the name of the device is also useful, since in some cases the device driver may not have a permanently assigned major number, and so it gets a dynamically assigned one. There may be other information which may be helpful to the driver as well. I would suggest a format like this:
driver=scsidisk major=8 minor=9 scsiid=0 lun=0 ...
Other devices drivers may feed other information to the user-space daemon, such as USB topology information. So it's best if the format is kept extensible.
- Ted
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