Re: number of eth0 device

[Mathieu Segaud]

Erik Mouw <erik@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> disait derniÃrement que :

> On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 12:31:35PM +0200, Karel Kulhavy wrote:
>> I am looking into Documentation/devices.txt in 2.4.25 and eth0 is not listed
>> there. If I grep "eth", I get only
>> 
>> 38 char        Myricom PCI Myrinet board
>> [...]
>> "This device is used for status query, board control and "user level
>> packet I/O."  This board is also accessible as a standard networking
>> "eth" device.  "
>> 
>> and then
>> 
>> /dev/pethr0
>> 
>> Is eth0 some kind of special device that doesn't have any number
>> assigned?
>
> Yes, there's no such thing as /dev/eth0, network interfaces have their
> own namespace. Linux uses the defacto standard BSD socket interface for
> networking, so blame the BSD people for violating the "everything is a
> file" rule.

well, the way NIC's behave kind of forbids this
taken from Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition, page 497
"The normal file operations (read, write, and so on) do not make sense
when applied to network interfaces, so it is not possible to apply the
Unix ''everything is a file'' approach to them"   

-- 
Mathieu
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