Re: dev

Marek Michalkiewicz (marekm@i17linuxb.ists.pwr.wroc.pl)
Wed, 6 Nov 1996 21:37:53 +0100 (MET)


Richard B. Johnson:
> The sun scheme of using /dev/dsk/c?t?d?s?........ for a device name
> positively sux (SIC).

Well, could you explain why do you think so? Like I do below...

The linux scheme of putting everything in /dev positively sux (SIC).
It slows down device name lookups and (even more so) programs that
allocate ptys, or map major/minor numbers to tty names (like ps),
or use isatty(), ttyname(), etc. And /dev will only grow - there
are about 1000 entries on my system right now. I didn't remove the
unneded ones (everything as shipped with Debian 1.1) - but then,
I still have only 64 and not 256 ptys (2 devices each).

Besides, it's not just Sun - I have seen this on HP-UX as well, SCO
uses different names but in /dev/dsk too. I believe they did that
for a reason, not just to make things suck more positively :-).

> Device name lookups only occur typically once per application when they
> are opened. Therefore, device name lookups do not appreciably affect
> machine performance.

Except for the examples given above...

Marek