Re: Suggested dual human/binary interface for proc/devfs

[Linus Torvalds]

On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Horst von Brand wrote:
> > 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), ...).

If that is true, then you might as well not have devfs at all. In that
schenario, you're better off with _just_ the backing store, and you might
as well mount an ext2 partition and have a deamon that populates it or
makes changes.

> > 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

Wrong. If you have to have backing store, THEN it is broken. That shows
that devfs doesn't actually buy you anything, and playing with a virtual
filesystem is not worth it. Because there are no advantages.

I'm hoping that devfs will evolve to something else. 

		Linus