The return of devfs [LWN.net]

The return of devfs

Posted May 7, 2009 9:13 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183)
In reply to: The return of devfs by nix
Parent article: The return of devfs

I see the bit about the permissions. But what difference does it make what the device node for a flash drive is called, as long as the name fulfils certain criteria (i.e. well known, reasonably unique to the drive, etc). Policy can be applied to the mount point name :)

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The return of devfs

Posted May 7, 2009 9:29 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes indeed: that was covered by my second case. But *not all devices are
like that*.

The return of devfs

Posted May 7, 2009 9:35 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link] (2 responses)

But my point is that these days the user of the system will normally not be interacting with the device nodes and their names unless they are doing something relatively close to the hardware, in which case control over name policy may be nice cosmetics but probably not more. In other cases, something will be layered between the device node and the user, and while that something needs to know the name, it doesn't care more than that what it actually is.

The return of devfs

Posted May 7, 2009 10:43 UTC (Thu) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link] (1 responses)

But my point is that these days the user of the system will normally not be interacting with the device nodes and their names unless they are doing something relatively close to the hardware

If it's just your own system, then indeed, nobody cares. But think of managing hundreds or thousands of systems and you may see the value of being able to standardize device naming. The precise naming policy is not so interesting, but the fact that there is one that is consistent is really rather important.

The return of devfs

Posted May 7, 2009 12:21 UTC (Thu) by mjthayer (guest, #39183) [Link]

Quite agree, which more or less falls under my second point. Again, that doesn't mean that you have to be able to choose the names yourself, only that you have to be sure they have been well and predictably chosen. Which is a problem that doesn't necessarily have to be solved over again by every administrator.