> I want a devfs so that I can have the kernel tell the outside world what
> devices exist. For things like ptys, I don't particularly care about
> a devfs -- the existing scheme is sufficient -- but for serial,
> parallel, ide, and scsi devices I'd much rather mount a magic
> filesystem instead of having to root through /proc/kmsg to find out
Just a thought as to the configurability of devfs - ya know, number of
ptys, ownership, permissions, multiple (chroot) /dev directories etc -
couldn't the devfs be an overlay (a la unionfs) on top of a regular
/dev directory?
a) devfs can copy permissions and stuff from the underlying directory
b) you could (conceivably?) mknod and chmod "through" the devfs
c) you could boot a non-devfs kernel and expect it to work
d) each device (driver) could decide what devices to expose from the
underlying directory - e.g. ptys would just pass through, disks would
only show what actually exists and provide rw------ devices for
volumes that don't exist "below", other devices might choose to ignore
it entirely, etc
e) you wouldn't depend on messy config files in /etc or anywhere to get
stuff working.
Just a thought.
~kzm
-- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants