Re: PROPOSAL: /proc/dev

James Mastros (root@jennifer-unix.dyn.ml.org)
Thu, 1 Jan 1998 16:35:53 -0500 (EST)

On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Thu, 1 Jan 1998, Richard Gooch wrote:
> >
> > Hi, all. My recent work on the /proc/mtrr interface has gotten me
> > thinking about an old discussion: configuring /dev entries. Instead of
> > complicated schemes for determining what devices are available and
> > automagically creating /dev entries, how about creating entries in
> > /proc/dev instead?
>
> Two quick notes:
>
> - I think it should be a separate filesystem type. It was a mistake in
> the first place to overload /proc as much as we did, we shouldn't
> continue that (I should really have split out the "per-process" things
> and the "global" things to two separate filesystems).
Wow! God agreed with ME! <G>

[...]
>
> Finally, I think it would be good to try to use the dcache to actually
> remember the names of the files rather than having a separate data
> structure for names.
Wow... two one one issue... Thanks for the code... (Export
"/usr/src/linux/memfs/names.c" Quit Yes "cd /usr/src/linux/memfs/" "jed
names.c" <remove english>).

> Too bad we didn't have the dcache when the original
> /proc was done, but these days you could actually populate /proc with the
> generic dcache functions.
But the problem there is that then we need an inode for every file (don't
we?), and inodes are big structures (which it probably shouldn't be, but
that is a topic for another day).

> Anyway, something like the above would be very powerful and avoid keeping
> filenames around anywhere but in the dcache..

-=- James Mastros

-- 
Information as a base of power is coming to an end.  In the way the world
works tomorrow, the power to *do* *something* *with* *information* is what
will matter. 


	-=- James Mastros, rephrasing Nugget (David McNett, distributed.net 
	    Big Man)