[...]
> > How? And just doing it at bootup isn't enough. Sometime later the
> > sysadmin does chmod(2) on /dev/floppy/0. That change has to be pushed
> > through to the underlying FS.
> "underlying FS"?
> There doesn't _need_ to be anything underlying.
For a RAMFS which starts clean each time it is mounted you are right. For a
filesystem that manages devices persistence of permissions and ownership is
vital, as is managing those with the standard tools (chown(1), chmod(1),
ls(1), find(1), ...).
[...]
> What do you buy by having a separate backing store (aka "underlying FS")?
> Not much.
Only the difference between "utterly broken" and "working" for devfs
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