From owner-freebsd-current Fri May 29 21:00:43 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA12233 for freebsd-current-outgoing; Fri, 29 May 1998 21:00:43 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from ns1.yes.no (ns1.yes.no [195.119.24.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA12222 for ; Fri, 29 May 1998 21:00:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from eivind@bitbox.follo.net) Received: from bitbox.follo.net (bitbox.follo.net [195.204.143.218]) by ns1.yes.no (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id EAA16310; Sat, 30 May 1998 04:00:26 GMT Received: (from eivind@localhost) by bitbox.follo.net (8.8.8/8.8.6) id GAA03950; Sat, 30 May 1998 06:00:09 +0200 (MET DST) Message-ID: <19980530060008.33353@follo.net> Date: Sat, 30 May 1998 06:00:08 +0200 From: Eivind Eklund To: "Jordan K. Hubbard" Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I see one major problem with DEVFS... References: <19980530054842.51661@follo.net> <17374.896500321@time.cdrom.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.89.1i In-Reply-To: <17374.896500321@time.cdrom.com>; from Jordan K. Hubbard on Fri, May 29, 1998 at 08:52:01PM -0700 Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, May 29, 1998 at 08:52:01PM -0700, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote: > > > E.g. I can shoot my foot off, but I can't sew it back on. :-) > > > > Yes, you can. You can mount another devfs and 'mv' a device from it > > (or at least that's the way the specs read - I don't have devfs > > enabled right now, so I can't test). > > That's utterly rude. :-) > > I hope you're not implying that this is going to be the accepted way > for doing this in the future as well. Non-persistence is a big enough > violation of POLA as it is, and not even being able to do mknod(2) > operations on a devfs to replace missing entries would be a POLA > catastrophe. Allowing mknod on a devfs would be somewhat akin to pointing an Uzi at your foot and playing with how close to the actual trig limit you can pull the trigger without firing. Remember, at least major numbers don't exist when DEVFS is fully deployed. For disks, minor numbers don't exist either. Perhaps extend mknod to give a warning "you're attempting to do a 'mknod' on a devfs. This is not possible. However, you can achieve the effect you want by mounting another devfs and using 'mv' to transfer device nodes' when somebody attempt to run it against a devfs? I'm certain somebody can write a paragraph in actual english that let a child of five understand this (as compared to my pseudo-understandable technobabble above). We might run into a block in that very few children of five are FreeBSD admins, though... Eivind. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message