On Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 03:35:04AM +0200, Goswin von Brederlow wrote:
> > 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.
One of the concepts behind devfs is that we could move away from
the current mapping of /dev/device --> {major,minor} --> kernel driver
system, and instead have the /dev/device map straight to the driver
(or something like that, I am just reciting this from memory).
Have they abandoned this approach?
> > 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.
Instead of the kernel knowing about device nodes, it needs to know
about the {major,minor} mappings.
--
Brian May <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
