From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Tue, 22 May 2001 13:29:47 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Tue, 22 May 2001 13:29:27 -0400 Received: from humbolt.nl.linux.org ([131.211.28.48]:28943 "EHLO humbolt.nl.linux.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Tue, 22 May 2001 13:29:22 -0400 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Daniel Phillips To: Oliver Xymoron Subject: Re: Why side-effects on open(2) are evil. (was Re: [RFD w/info-PATCH]device arguments from lookup) Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 18:51:20 +0200 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] Cc: Alexander Viro , Linus Torvalds , linux-kernel , In-Reply-To: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <0105221851200C.06233@starship> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Tuesday 22 May 2001 17:24, Oliver Xymoron wrote: > On Mon, 21 May 2001, Daniel Phillips wrote: > > On Monday 21 May 2001 19:16, Oliver Xymoron wrote: > > > What I'd like to see: > > > > > > - An interface for registering an array of related devices > > > (almost always two: raw and ctl) and their legacy device numbers > > > with a single userspace callout that does whatever /dev/ creation > > > needs to be done. Thus, naming and permissions live in user > > > space. No "device node is also a directory" weirdness... > > > > Could you be specific about what is weird about it? > > *boggle* > >[general sense of unease] > > I don't think it's likely to be even workable. Just consider the > directory entry for a moment - is it going to be marked d or [cb]? It's going to be marked 'd', it's a directory, not a file. > If it doesn't have the directory bit set, Midnight commander won't > let me look at it, and I wouldn't blame cd or ls for complaining. If it > does have the 'd' bit set, I wouldn't blame cp, tar, find, or a > million other programs if they did the wrong thing. They've had 30 > years to expect that files aren't directories. They're going to act > weird. No problem, it's a directory. > Linus has been kicking this idea around for a couple years now and > it's still a cute solution looking for a problem. It just doesn't > belong in UNIX. Hmm, ok, do we still have any *technical* reasons? -- Daniel