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

[Linus Torvalds]

On Sat, 15 Apr 2000, G. Allen Morris III wrote:
>  > 
>  > Exactly. This is the kind of thing that makes devfs worth it. Together
>  > with some way of specifying these things for the whole network (I wasn't
>  > kidding when I mentioned NIS) it actually gives system administrators
>  > something new. And it makes for more than just a regular /dev on a regular
>  > filesystem.
> 
> This sounds just like autofs to me!  The only difference with /dev is
> that you would be creating block or character special files instead of
> soft links and  nfs mounts.

Yes. I'm definitely envisioning something like autofs, where the decisions
on naming, permissions, meaning etc can be made in user space.

At the same time it's definitely more than autofs, due to the interactions
with hot-plug devices, and the kernel having a way of telling the deamon
when a new device gets added. So if you just extended autofs to handle
special devices too, it wouldn't be very interesting yet.

At least I'm thinking of it as a "autofs"+"device manager" kind of thing.

		Linus