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Date:      Wed, 19 Apr 1995 13:02:53 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Mike Pritchard <pritc003@maroon.tc.umn.edu>
To:        davidg@Root.COM
Cc:        bde@zeta.org.au, julian@ref.tfs.com, hackers@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: [DEVFS] your opinions sought!
Message-ID:  <199504191802.NAA05091@mpp.com>
In-Reply-To: <199504191017.DAA00268@corbin.Root.COM> from "David Greenman" at Apr 19, 95 03:17:04 am

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> >>I personally have always prefered the flat scheme of /dev (with possible
> >>exceptions for /dev/fd/*).  This is a religious issue, I have spoken my
> >>religion.
> >
> >I like it fairly flat.  There certainly shouldn't be subdirectories for
> >pieces of one device.
> 
>    I agree with Bruce. I would have agreed with Rod, but the simple fact is
> that our /dev directory is getting very large and bloated, and this will only
> get worse. Perhaps /dev/disks/* and /dev/ttys/*, etc, might be a way to
> organize things (in other words, by device class). I prefer to not minimize
> the number of levels as much as possible, while still providing some
> organization.
>
> -DG

I've used systems in the past that were setup like:

/dev/rdsk/*, /dev/dsk/*, /dev/tty/*, /dev/pty/*, etc...
Only a handfull of oddball devices were left in /dev.  E.g
/dev/null, console, mem, kmem, etc...

My only problem with it was if I forgot which type of machine
I was on and was looking for a /dev/xxx file instead of a /dev/rdsk/xxx file.

>> it also means that disk slices can be shown only when they
>> actually exist on the disk..
>
> Well, it's perfectly feasible (and adds less kernel bloat) to query
> the kernel at boot time for attached devices and build up the /dev
> directory based on the information.  This IMHO is a better solution
> than the devfs.
> 
> Simon

I've also seen some system that was able to generate /dev by 
reading information out of the kernel at run time.
-- 
Mike Pritchard
pritc003@maroon.tc.umn.edu
"Go that way.  Really fast.  If something gets in your way, turn"



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