Re: [ANNOUNCE] ndevfs - a "nano" devfs

[Michael Tokarev]

Greg KH wrote:
> Now I just know I'm going to regret this somehow...
> 
> Anyway, here's yet-another-ramfs-based filesystem, ndevfs.  It's a very
> tiny:
> $ size fs/ndevfs/inode.o 
>    text    data     bss     dec     hex filename
>    1571     200       8    1779     6f3 fs/ndevfs/inode.o
> replacement for devfs for those embedded users who just can't live
> without the damm thing.  It doesn't allow subdirectories, and only uses
> LSB compliant names.  But it works, and should be enough for people to
> use, if they just can't wean themselves off of the idea of an in-kernel
> fs to provide device nodes.

Well.  Maybe directories really are of no use, but mknod/symlink/unlink
*are* useful.  That same mdadm who needs to create /dev/mdX *before*
that device is created?  And socket for /dev/log...

And oh, directories.. devpts?  Stuff like cciss/... represented in sysfs
like cciss!... ?

I don't see anything wrong with allowing creating/removing files in
the filesystem (except of possible locking issues which can arise) --
in-kernel support just does mknod/unlink on insert/remove, and if
that fails (EEXIST/ENOENT), well, so be it...

And since the whole namespace is now flat, another question comes in:
is there any guarantee the names will not overlap?  /dev/ttyS0 and
/dev/usb/ttyS0 (I don't remember which one it was, but I *think* I
saw same names but in different dirs in /dev...)

/mjt
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