Re: devfs - why not ?

[Richard Gooch]

Michael H. Warfield writes:
> On Wed, Apr 12, 2000 at 07:53:37PM -0400, Justin Hahn wrote:
> > On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Ricky Beam wrote:
> > > On Wed, 12 Apr 2000, Michael H. Warfield wrote:
> > > >	Now if there were only a CLEAN solution to the non-volatile
> > > >attributes problem.  Set permissions and ownership of a device.  Device
> 
> > > If you define "clean solution" as '/usr/bin/vi'... either alter the
> > > settings in the source or reset them everytime it's loaded.
> 
> > How hard is setting up devfsd?? The man page explains it in perfect detail.
> 
> 	It's a bitch and you're dreaming if it's anything that wasn't
> anticipated in advance.  Based on the devfsd man page, explain to me
> exactly how to configure devsfd to create a link from ttf/{n} to
> ttyF{n} any time a device in the ttf subdirectory is created in
> devfs.  Give it your best shot.

If I add C-shell style $var:t support, then you will be able to do
this easily in the config file. Of course, hacking devfsd.c is another
option (possibly better: I'll get back to you on that one).

> > It's cleaner than tarring up /dev, and it's persistent. Ideally it would
> > record changes you make with chown and chmod in a database, but you could 
> > probably instrument that yourself (simply hook the change event to call a
> > script which writes the perms in a coherent way, and then optional_include that
> > at the top of devfsd.conf)
> 
> > Quite frankly, I thought this argument had died out ages ago.
> 
> 	With no resolution!
> 
> 	It's a butt-ugly kludge that falls on its ass and dies any
> time the system fails to shut down properly or if you have transient
> devices.  One of the big things with 2.4 is improved resource
> management.  We should now expect something reasonable from hot
> swapable devices and PCMCIA and Firewire and USB.  The tar option
> blows goats when you factor transient devices into the equation.
> The devfsd option is marginally better but doesn't support
> everthing, can't be configured to support everything, and still
> leaves timing windows like buckshot.

OK, will people *PLEASE* stop whinging about this? I've already said,
multiple times, that I'll be adding "tunnelling" down to the
underlying disc-based FS. It's Work In Progress (there's even evidence
of it in fs/devfs/base.c)

Just be patient, and it will be solved cleanly.

				Regards,

					Richard....
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