Re: udev and devfs - The final word

[Helge Hafting <helgehaf _at_ xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2003 at 04:29:42PM -0800, Greg KH wrote:
> 
>  2) We are (well, were) running out of major and minor numbers for
>     devices.

devfs tried to fix this one by _getting rid_ of those numbers.
Seriously - what are they needed for?  
(Yes, I know why they're needed with /dev on ext2)
Opening a device in devfs went straight to the device from the
inode - no extra lookup of "device numbers"
Numbers were provided mostly for backward compatibility - they
weren't used for the main task of accessing devices.

udev has many other advantages of course, too bad we still
have to carry those numbers around.

Helge Hafting
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo _at_ vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/