Re: PROPOSAL: /proc/dev
Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU)
Mon, 5 Jan 1998 12:07:49 +1100
Kevin Lentin writes:
> On Fri, Jan 02, 1998 at 01:36:42AM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> > > If a process tries to open() an entry in /dev which does not exist,
> > > devfs passes the name of the entry to kerneld. It is up to kerneld to
> > > convert filenames to modules (i.e. "ttyS{0,1,2,3}" to "serial").
> >
> > Sorry, no.
> >
> > I refuse to use a kernel that depends on kerneld. That's final.
>
> I think that paragraph was referring to the moduled kernel situation. At
> the moment kerneld does a major(/minor) to filename conversion. Now it does
> a nodename to filename conversion. In the current system, the device open
> fails if kerneld is not around. In this situation the same thing happens.
> If serial is compiled into the kernel then it would (presumably) have to
> register its device names.
>
> If the above paragraph is implying that a daemon is needed to tell the
> kernel that ttyS0 means the NON-MODULE kernel serial driver then I'm with
> Linus for sure. (got to cover my back ;-)
No. If the driver is loaded (through being built-in, manually or
automagically loaded), then it registers the /dev entries. So a
non-kerneld system will show all available devices.
Regards,
Richard....