Re: [RFC] devfs API

Theodore Ts'o
2002-11-12T07:58:13Z

On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 08:49:22PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:
> The only way I'll use devfs is
> * on a separate testbox devoid of network interfaces
> * with no users
> * with no data - disk periodically populated from image on CD.
>
> And that's regardless of that cleanup - fixing the interface doesn't solve
> the internal races, so...

Hi Al,

It's good that you're trying to clean up the devfs code, but...

How many people are actually using devfs these days? I don't like it
myself, and I've had to add a fair amount of hair to fsck's
mount-by-label/uuid code to deal with interesting cases such as
kernels where devfs is configured, but not actually mounted (it
changes what /proc/partitions exports). So I'm one of those who have
never looked all that kindly on devfs, which shouldn't come as a
surprise to most folks.

In any case, if there aren't all that many people using devfs, I can
think of a really easy way in which we could simplify and clean up its
API by slimming it down by 100%......

- Ted