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From: veit@fanoe.gmd.de (Holger Veit)
Subject: Re: Some ideas on the driver interface (was: Re: Release of drivers etc.)
Message-ID: <1993Mar10.102342.26886@gmd.de>
Sender: veit@fanoe (Holger Veit)
Nntp-Posting-Host: fanoe
Organization: GMD - German National Research Center for Computer Science
References: <C3MCIF.Iv@sugar.neosoft.com> <1nj0ej$j6s@walt.ee.pdx.edu>
Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1993 10:23:42 GMT
Lines: 37
In article <1nj0ej$j6s@walt.ee.pdx.edu>, rgrimes@acacia (Rodney W. Grimes) writes:
|> peter@NeoSoft.com (Peter da Silva) writes:
|> : It would probably be best to integrate the master file and the BSD-ish config
|> : file somehow... maybe:
|> :
|> : controller wd0 at isa? port "IO_WD1" bio irq 14 vector wdintr
|> : disk wd0 at wd0 drive 0
|> : device wd0 at major 0 minor wd0a 0 wd0b 1 wd0c 2 wd0d 3...
|> : disk wd1 at wd1 drive 1
|> : device wd1 at major 1 minor wd1a 8 wd1b 9 wd1c 10 wd1d 11...
|> :
|> : [rest of example deleted]
|>
|> You really want to duplicate /dev/MAKEDEV in every kernel config file? That
|> sounds like storing duplicate data.
|> Are you advocating that config do mknod's in /dev? That would mean every
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
|> time you config a kernel /dev would get rebuilt. Seems to be a waste.
This could be dangerous. Just imagine that in your new kernel you have
assigned wd0 a new major number (for whatever). Config will create new
/dev/wd0* and the still running old kernel or applications using /dev/*
may crash. New devs should be mknod'd at bootup of a kernel (e.g.
automatically by a devfs) or later manually by executing /dev/MAKEDEV.
I don't see a problem with duplicate info, as long as there is a mechanism
to distinguish between an old /dev/MAKEDEV and the new one; they must fit
together.
Holger
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