Re: [patch] dynamic char and block devices

Richard Gooch (rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca)
Wed, 13 Oct 1999 11:24:35 -0600


Jeff Garzik writes:
> The attached patch against 2.3.21 updates fs/devices.c to be dynamic,
> instead of using two static arrays indexed by major number.

Oh, my! So now we have a list search on every device open. This is
*exactly* one of the things I predicted 2 years ago in the devfs FAQ,
once people started to fix the 16bit device size limitation.

This just highlights one of my points that device numbers are
fundamentally unscalable. With devfs you avoid this major index/list
search/hash lookup entirely.

Well, fine, if that's how you want to run your system. But at least
let those of us who want to avoid this extra cost have the option.

Regards,

Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au
Current: rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca

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