Re: UUIDs (and devfs and major/minor numbers)
Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH (allbery@kf8nh.apk.net)
Mon, 21 Jun 1999 17:29:24 -0400
In message <Pine.LNX.4.05.9906210748380.11093-100000@mhw.ULib.IUPUI.Edu>, "Mark
H. Wood" writes:
+-----
| > | devfs detractor either; at most I've asked people to consider whether a
| > | filesystem hierarchy is really the most appropriate representation for th
| e
| > | various information that we all want.
| >
| > Why wouldn't it be? In its most generalized form, a filesystem is a
| > hierarchical database used for kernel-to-userspace communication, which is
| > why Plan 9 generalized it to namespaces and why there is e.g. /proc. It
|
| Besides, there's nothing that guarantees a filesystem *must* be
| hierarchial. You could have tagging metadata and a QBE filespec syntax if
| you really wanted to. (I can't yet imagine wanting to.) Hierarchy wasn't
| inherent in the TOPS-10 filesystem, for example; it was grafted in later
| because it is, after all, quite useful. Early MSDOS was the same way, I
| believe.
+--->8
But there is still a hierarchy, just under another name. "Show me all CDROM
devices" defines a hierarchy based on device type. "Show me all SCSI
devices" defines one based on the bus the device is on.
Unless you're suggesting that the enumerator generate all devices and let
userspace cope with the result --- which seems needlessly expensive: a
system call (whether it's sysctl() or read() wouldn't matter) per device,
when searching for only a small subset of devices.
--
brandon s. allbery [os/2][linux][solaris][japh] allbery@kf8nh.apk.net
system administrator [WAY too many hats] allbery@ece.cmu.edu
carnegie mellon / electrical and computer engineering KF8NH
We are Linux. Resistance is an indication that you missed the point.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/