The ongoing device number debate

The ongoing device number debate

Posted Apr 16, 2003 21:08 UTC (Wed) by Ross (subscriber, #4065)
In reply to: The ongoing device number debate by mcelrath
Parent article: The ongoing device number debate

For one thing, the idea of making a device node for only the things which are actually there doesn't work with all devices. Then there are dynamically loaded modules. If using a device node is what triggers module loading and if modules have to be loaded to create the device nodes then we have a problem.

The main reasons people don't like devfs are design issues:
1) The code is quite ugly, and misuses internal kernel interfaces. This breakage has made much of Al's cleanup work difficult.
2) The whole thing could be done in userspace.
3) It uses non-standard device names. While some of the changes are arguably an improvement, this should have been separated from the idea of a dynamic /dev.
4) Lots of people like the Solaris way better.
5) There are lots of race conditions in the code which don't hit people very often, but can cause disk corruption.
6) The mechanism which is used to remember changes in file permissions, etc. is ugly to say the least.

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