[EMAIL PROTECTED] thought:
> The latest official Linux release does not have devfs by default,
> it seems that devfs is not considered to be stable.
What on earth are you taking about? The 2.4.3 kernel, stable series,
from kernel.org, is the latest official release and it does have devfs,
as did 2.4.2 I believe. I hope you're not considering the offerings of
some vendor as "official" releases, because for kernel technology flows
from the source, and other people just wrap it.
> For this reason, there is not yet a need for cdrecord to support it.
> Note that is mayinly related to the fact that the Linux kernel
> guys kicked me into my ass sdeveral times ans I now decided to wait
> for new things to become stable. This is needed as long as there is no
> plan for creating stable interfaces in Linux.
Actually devfs is the plan for stable interfaces, by which adding or
removing a device will not make the 'real" device names change. But from
the discussion by the authors, it would appear that they intend not to
use the names, but to provide abstraction by allowing names which point
to identifyable physical devices, by controller, bus, target and lun.
Without devfs /dev/cdburner can point to /dev/scd1, but if you add a CD
on that bus, the device could become scd2, or scd0 by removing the zero
device. So devfs adds stability.
That said, don't take this as a suggestion that it's urgent to support
devfs, but rather that it's time to look at supporting devices better by
name only. This device by bus, target and lun (but not controller) is
useful, but really needs to be updated for current Linux, and possibly
other systems.
Don't take me for a supporter of devfs, either, on the few systems where
I use it, I have it mounted on /dev/devfs rather than /dev, and have the
traditional devices in /dev/trad, then make symlinks as desired. It's
nice for disk, I have reservatins about serial and parallel, and hot
swap devices are a real learning experience.
Devfs is stable, and it's time to figure out using devices better by
name, not what the names will be.
--
-bill davidsen ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
[ European user mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ]
"The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the
last possible moment - but no longer" -me
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