Re: [PATCH] driver-core: devtmpfs - driver core maintained /dev tmpfs

From: Michael Riepe
Date: Sat May 02 2009 - 14:20:35 EST


Hi!

Kay Sievers wrote:
> On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 15:18, Alan Cox <alan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>>>No tool ever has a chance to get to the information only available at
>>>early kernel init. All such tools will need to "replay" what the
>>>kernel already did. This is intended to save us from doing this, and
>>>retain the information which is there, but lost at the moment the
>>>tools have the first chance to run.
>>
>>Serious question - which is the better problem to fix ?
>
>
> I'm very sure, you can not fix it outside the kernel. Or do you have
> an idea how to create the missing device nodes for device without
> crawling sysfs, when the first userspace process is started?

Well, what about this? Let the kernel buffer all events until udev is
ready to process them. Once it signals that it's up and running - the
best method for that is tbd -, empty the queue, and then discard it,
including the additional code. If udev doesn't come up in time after
init has started, or the buffer overflows, assume the system is using a
static /dev and throw away the queue as well. If udev starts too late,
it can still do a coldplug - in that case, boot speed is already so low
that the additional delay hardly matters.

Comments?

--
Michael "Tired" Riepe <michael.riepe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
X-Tired: Each morning I get up I die a little
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