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Date: Tue, 12 Nov 2002 03:04:18 -0500
From: "Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>
To: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
Cc: Ryan Anderson <ryan@michonline.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] devfs API
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On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 08:49:22PM -0500, Alexander Viro wrote:
> The only way I'll use devfs is
> 	* on a separate testbox devoid of network interfaces
> 	* with no users
> 	* with no data - disk periodically populated from image on CD.
> 
> And that's regardless of that cleanup - fixing the interface doesn't solve
> the internal races, so...

Hi Al,

It's good that you're trying to clean up the devfs code, but...

How many people are actually using devfs these days?  I don't like it
myself, and I've had to add a fair amount of hair to fsck's
mount-by-label/uuid code to deal with interesting cases such as
kernels where devfs is configured, but not actually mounted (it
changes what /proc/partitions exports).  So I'm one of those who have
never looked all that kindly on devfs, which shouldn't come as a
surprise to most folks.

In any case, if there aren't all that many people using devfs, I can
think of a really easy way in which we could simplify and clean up its
API by slimming it down by 100%......

						- Ted
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