Re: Available for testing: /dev/pts filesystem

Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU)
Tue, 24 Mar 1998 22:23:45 +1100


H. Peter Anvin writes:
> Since C. Scott Ananian added support for the SysV/Unix98 /dev/ptmx
> multiplex pty master device, I thought I might as well fix the other
> side of the equation. At:

Well, the other side of the equation has already been fixed. It's
called devfs.

> As most of you are quite aware of, I usually don't like putting things
> in the kernel. In particular, I believe devfs to be a bad idea.

Yes, I know you aren't one of the faithful ;-) However, I contend that
there are a number of problems that devfs *solves*. And it solves them
cleanly and efficiently with minimal fuss and minimal kernel bloat. I
really think you should read the documentation I wrote about it which
explains all the reasoning behind it (and some of the alternatives)
before you criticise it.

> However, in this particular case I have been persuaded to agree that
> pty's are sufficiently special -- they really act more like pipes or
> sockets than device nodes -- that a virtual filesystem is probably the
> right thing to do. I have tried to keep the memory requirements of
> this filesystem as small as possible.

As have I with devfs. I'll have a look at your VFS mods and see if I
can make use of it in devfs.

Regards,

Richard....

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