> Stephen Frost wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 7 Oct 1999, Horst von Brand wrote:
> >
> > > This is _horrible_. Suddenly there are files whose attributes aren't fixed
> > > by chmod(1)/chown(1), but by a magic file.
> > >
> > > Again. The way Unix is designed, permanent information about files resides
> > > in the filesystem. Another basic Unix design premise is that devices are
> > > files. So their attributes reside in the filesystem. Anything else breaks
> > > much ("tar cf dev.tar /dev", ..., "tar xf dev.tar /dev" doesn't work
> > > anymore (but it looks like it does!); can't dump/restore /dev; ...). It
> > > might also have _very_ serious security implications (what if the magic
> > > devfs.conf file goes missing, or is clobbered?)
> >
> > Agreed, this can be a problem, hence my thoughts on a set of /dev
> > files that reside on the filesystem pointing to /devices, which can be
> > thought of as basically the same thing as major,minor pairs, w/ the
> > exception that they are names (And as such much more scalable, and often
> > easier to understand). Unfortunately, I don't know enough about how
> > devices work to know if something like this is even possible.
> > I suppose you could take away /devices and change whatever you have
> > to to make major,minor pairs names instead... Then have a userspace daemon
> > that can do what it wants to the files, or they can be modified by hand.
> > Of course, this looses us the (debated) advantage of having /dev being in
> > memory instead of on disk.
> > Then I ask you, how can a script find out specific information
> > about what hardware exists on the system? Run through everything in /dev?
> > If /dev is fully populated, this could take a while... /proc gives us
> > some data currently, though it's not in a very standard fashion, and
> > currently would be hard for a script or program to parse out.
> > Curious, what are your feelings on /proc, anyhow?
>
> Don't you just realize that all the twised symlinc blah blah proposals
> about
> devfs you are doing here are a sure sign of a basically bad design?
> If you don't beleve then just try to explain this all to a fresh new
> linux user.
major,minor's aren't exactly all that great either... "Oh, you just
use this number and that number, and you set them as attributes to the file
and it magically talks to this device..."
Stephen
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