On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> What I envision is more like "autofs", in fact. I really like autofs, and
> it has nothing to do with the fact that Peter works in the room next-door.
> It has everything to do with facts like being able to lookup the
> information over NIS etc - which is exactly the kind of feature that I
> think in the long run would be extremely cool for /devfs. And it's still
> reasonably small, because the kernel doesn't make any real decisions.
That's fine. I think that devfs architecture is a nightmare (sorry,
Richard), but yes, autofs is a part of the _right_ picture. Remember how
Plan 9 does devices? Each driver uses generic code to define a filesystem
(small tree) and you union-mount it on /dev or where the heck you want it
to be. Make autofs a bit more generic (teach it to mount on /foo upon
access to /foo/bar) and teach the userland part to run script upon
(u)mount. That's it. No need to put that code into devfs - we'ld better
teach already existing thing (autofs) to deal with that stuff (and that
stuff only).
_If_ we go for namespaces - most of permission problems goes away. We
should just check permissions upon _mount_, not access.
> Think of the administration advantages of something like _that_. And
> that's why I think devfs is eventually really cool - not because of what
> it does, but because of the _potential_.
>
> The main reason for me to include devfs into the kernel was to try to move
> the bickering about it from pure bickering to a more productive level.
> Still bickering, but now, because it's integrated, I hope that not only
> discussion but changes will be more open to people who might not otherwise
> have cared.
Arrgh. In that you've definitely succeeded...
D,NA
Al
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