From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 23 Jun 2002 21:32:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 23 Jun 2002 21:32:22 -0400 Received: from mta5.snfc21.pbi.net ([206.13.28.241]:15759 "EHLO mta5.snfc21.pbi.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Sun, 23 Jun 2002 21:32:21 -0400 Date: Sun, 23 Jun 2002 18:34:22 -0700 From: David Brownell Subject: Re: driverfs is not for everything! (was: [PATCH] /proc/scsi/map) To: "Grover, Andrew" Cc: "'Nick Bellinger'" , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org, Patrick Mochel Message-id: <3D16771E.2010401@pacbell.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Accept-Language: en-us, en, fr User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.9) Gecko/20020513 References: <59885C5E3098D511AD690002A5072D3C02AB7F52@orsmsx111.jf.intel.com> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > Is the device PHYSICALLY hooked up to the computer? If not, it shouldn't be > in devicefs. What's "devicefs" -- some new filesystem? Or a mis/re-naming of "driverfs"? I assume you don't mean "devfs". > The device tree (for which devicefs is the fs representation) was originally > meant to enable good device power management and configuration. Surely a driver using IP-over-wire like iSCSI is no less deserving of appearing in "driverfs" than one whose driver uses custom-protocol-over-a-"wire" like USB, FireWire, FC, IR, SCSI, or Bluetooth? I don't see why some disks (for example) should deserve to be "more equal than others" -- and approved to be in driverfs. Admittedly some of those may have few power management concerns beyond basic startup/shutdown sequencing. But the configuration management issues won't go away just because a driver talks to a device over some more generalized notion of wire. I suspect those are probably more important, long-term, than the power management hooks. I seem to recall other operating systems starting out with a device/driver tree well before power management existed, and was surprised when I noticed Linux didn't have one yet. No, of course driverfs isn't for everything. But if it's not for all drivers, then what's it for -- just power management? - Dave