> A working devfs that can be used in all places where device nodes > might be needed would mean that the device vnode apparatus in ffs and > every other fs could be removed, yes,
...only if you don't mind breaking compatability. I don't know to what extent compatability is necessary, but I think it's something that needs to be at least thought about. Device nodes in filesystems need to not break ffs (inter alia), or you can't mount old filesystems and poke around, but to what extent do they need to _work_? I'm not sure what I think in that regard. I actually think much of my resistance to a devfs is that it makes it significantly more difficult to have device nodes outside /dev. I've used a Unix-ish emulation layer (an early prerelease of Eunice) whose /dev was heavy magic, and it was always a bad fit; when I started using the real thing it made much more sense. Confining device nodes to /dev strikes me as an excellent example of preventing stupid things and thereby preventing clever things. (Symlinks help, some, but without set-id symlinks they can't really make up the difference. And as far as I know nobody, not even I, has implemented set-id symlinks yet.) /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mo...@rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
