> > The implementation should be fairly simple... all syscalls to devices
> > with the "generic" major would get multiplexed (based upon their
> > minor) to the "real" major handler,
>
> Nice idea; unforunately the number of bits in the minor number is
> already a limiting factor in Linux.
We could implement /dev in the same way we implement /proc...
Device drivers can register/unregister their device files in
/dev and they get assigned a 'device number' for each device
they allocate (no need for major/minor numbers)
For devices that are compiled-in some script in /etc/rc.d
could change the permissions to the wanted ones.
Loadable modules could get the dev_perm=0600 or whatever
as a command-line option (from /etc/conf.modules).
This would probably cost us 10 to 20 k of kernel-mem, but
that's a small price to pay (even on a 4M machine) for
making things _work_ in all circumstances...
No need to ever assign major/minor numbers again would
also help people who built a custom device driver or
made a kernel-patch for some driver (without registering
a major with Linus).
comments wanted,
Rik.
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Send Linux memory-management wishes to me: I'm currently looking
for something to hack...