Russell Coker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On Thu, 21 Aug 2003 22:41, Brian May wrote: > > On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 07:16:46PM +0900, Miles Bader wrote: > > > Russell Coker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Devfs is getting > > > less support now, it might not be the best time to > start > > > depending on it. > > > > > > Indeed, it's looking likely that GregKH's `udev' will replace > > > devfs sometime in the future. > > > > Dare I ask the obvious question: what is udev? Why is it better > > then devfs? > > A paper on udev was presented at OLS this year, at the URL below you > can find a copy in PDF format. Basically it is a way of providing > some of the features of devfs but based around using hotplug to > create device nodes using mknod under a regular directory. So there > is no mountable /dev.
Which means you need certain userspace tools for it to work at all and if they fail you are screwed. Also how do you boot without a /dev? You need a dummy dev containing any possible root device. Now that you mention the mounting /dev going away this realy sucks. > http://archive.linuxsymposium.org/ols2003/Proceedings/ > > As for why it's better than udev. There have been bugs in devfs in > the past related to race conditions. Also devfs requires that the > kernel knows about all the device nodes, whether this is a bug or an > excellent feature is a matter of opinion. > > I would prefer that devfs was kept as it's worked well for me. But > that it seems that things are moving away from it. Doesn't sysfs basically do most of what devfs. Doesn't it know about all devices? MfG Goswin PS: I realy haven't looked into 2.5/2.6 kernels yet due to their lack of compiling, booting or running for longer than a minute.
