Re: Larger dev_t

Richard Gooch
2001-04-03T16:07:22Z

Alan Cox writes:
> > > One thing I certainly miss: DevFS is not mandatory (yet).
> >
> > That's "only" due to the fact that DevFS is an insanely racy and
> > instable
> > piece of CRAP. I'm unhappy it's there anyway...
>
> It certainly seems to have some race conditions but other than that
> and the slight problem it puts policy in the kernel it seems ok. I'd
> prefer it was userspace and implemented via /sbin/hotplug - but that
> isnt possible yet and opens a whole other set of interesting races
> to ponder

Yes, devfs has some races. They are in the process of getting
fixed. Yes, it's taken a long time (moving house twice in 6 months and
several travel trips take their toll on productivity).

However, a large number of people run devfs on small to large systems,
and these "races" aren't causing problems. People tell me it's quite
stable. I run devfs on my systems, and not once have I had a problem
due to devfs "races". So I feel it's quite unfair to paint such a dire
picture (I'm referring to Martin's comments here, not Alan's).

Regards,

Richard....
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