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Date:      Mon, 18 Oct 1999 11:44:19 -0700
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com>
Cc:        Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.ORG>, cvs-committers@FreeBSD.ORG, cvs-all@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: You gotta be kidding .... Re: cvs commit: src/sys/miscfs/specfs spec_vnops.c 
Message-ID:  <199910181844.LAA01396@dingo.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 18 Oct 1999 11:46:35 PDT." <199910181846.LAA69296@apollo.backplane.com> 

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> :That's what this basically does; it just shortcuts the the old block 
> :device entries to the character device to avoid violating POLA, so that 
> :people can experiment with life on a system with nothing that behaves 
> :like a "block device".
> 
>     Block devices and character devices have very different operational 
>     characteristics.  For example, block devices allow reblocking while
>     character devices do not.  Block devices handle EOF differently then
>     character devices.  Simply folding them together means that anyone 
>     actually using block devices may not notice an immediate problem and
>     this could result in corruption or unexpected operation without a specific
>     error being returned.

That's why we're _TESTING_ this, right?  So that people know that they 
need to keep their eyes open for this sort of behaviour.  If there are 
real issues with this, rather than just paranoid hysteria, then we need 
to deal with them.  Fixing fsck, for example, would be something pretty 
high on the list, but you're hiding the issue in the histrionics.  8(

-- 
\\ Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. \\  Mike Smith
\\ Tell him he should learn how to fish himself,  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\ and he'll hate you for a lifetime.             \\  msmith@cdrom.com




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