Re: PROPOSAL: /proc/dev

Theodore Y. Ts'o (tytso@MIT.EDU)
Fri, 9 Jan 1998 12:25:42 -0500


Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 11:40:03 +1100
From: Richard Gooch <rgooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU>

If I understand what you mean, there would be problems. Device drivers
which use devfs (in a devfs-enabled kernel) would *only* be accessible
through a mounted devfs. Other device drivers which are not yet
converted to be devfs-capable (i.e. with #ifdef CONFIG_DEVFS wrappers)
would *only* be accessible through the old disc-based c&b nodes.

The is an important difference between the way disc-based c&b nodes
and devfs make the connection between an entry in /dev and the actual
device driver.

Note that the devfs doesn't use the major&minor system.

I thought you said devfs would be compatible with people who need to
create a subset of /dev with character and block devices in (say)
/u1/ftp/dev for the purpose of creating chroot'ed jail....

Now you're saying that devfs will *not* be compatible with somone who
needs to use chroot --- say, in anonymous FTP servers. Worse yet, as
device drivers are converted over to use devfs, it will be impossible to
use such devices in an chrooted system?

Say it isn't so....

- Ted