Re: PROPOSAL: /proc/dev

Kevin Lentin (kevinl@cs.monash.edu.au)
Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:03:23 +1100

On Fri, Jan 02, 1998 at 01:36:42AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > If a process tries to open() an entry in /dev which does not exist,
> > devfs passes the name of the entry to kerneld. It is up to kerneld to
> > convert filenames to modules (i.e. "ttyS{0,1,2,3}" to "serial").
>
> Sorry, no.
>
> I refuse to use a kernel that depends on kerneld. That's final.

I think that paragraph was referring to the moduled kernel situation. At
the moment kerneld does a major(/minor) to filename conversion. Now it does
a nodename to filename conversion. In the current system, the device open
fails if kerneld is not around. In this situation the same thing happens.
If serial is compiled into the kernel then it would (presumably) have to
register its device names.

If the above paragraph is implying that a daemon is needed to tell the
kernel that ttyS0 means the NON-MODULE kernel serial driver then I'm with
Linus for sure. (got to cover my back ;-)

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