Re: LANANA: To Pending Device Number Registrants

Richard Gooch
2001-05-14T23:38:37Z

Andi Kleen writes:
> On Mon, May 14, 2001 at 01:29:51PM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > Big device numbers are _not_ a solution. I will accept a 32-bit one, but
> > no more, and I will _not_ accept a "manage by hand" approach any more. The
> > time has long since come to say "No". Which I've done. If you can't make
> > it manage the thing automatically with a script, you won't get a hardcoded
> > major device number just because you're lazy.
>
> As far as I can see it just needs a /proc/devices that also outputs
> minor ranges with names, and a small program similar to scsidev to
> generate nodes in /dev based on that on the fly on early bootup.

You can do that with devfs. It provides all this information. If you
really don't want to mount devfs over /dev, then mount it elsewhere
and just use it as an information source to populate /dev. No need to
add more code to the kernel to do it another way.

Regards,

Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au
Current: rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca