Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265854AbUAECxM (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 21:53:12 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265855AbUAECxM (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 21:53:12 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:27346 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265854AbUAECxK (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 21:53:10 -0500 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 18:52:56 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: Andries Brouwer cc: Rob Love , rob@landley.net, Pascal Schmidt , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Greg KH Subject: Re: udev and devfs - The final word In-Reply-To: <20040104230104.A11439@pclin040.win.tue.nl> Message-ID: References: <20040103040013.A3100@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040103141029.B3393@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104000840.A3625@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104034934.A3669@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104142111.A11279@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104230104.A11439@pclin040.win.tue.nl> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1774 Lines: 45 On Sun, 4 Jan 2004, Andries Brouwer wrote: > > Surprise! Are you leaving POSIX? Or ditching NFS? > Or demanding that NFS servers must never reboot? Ok, Andries, time for you to take a deep breath, and calm down. Because your arguments are getting ridiculous in the extreme. A NFS server is sure as hell not going to export _its_ dynamic /dev to its clients. That would be not just stupid, but crazy. Next you tell me that you were using devfs and exporting that over NFS. A NFS server is going to export something _totally_ different than its own /dev directory - it needs to be _client_-specific anyway. That's true with stable numbers too, btw - ever tried to mount a Solaris /dev on a Linux client? No workee. > A common Unix idiom is testing for the identity > of two files by comparing st_ino and st_dev. > A broken idiom? No. It still works. Even if the device numbers change across reboots. Why? Becuase that _program_ sure as hell isn't running across a reboot. And again, this is not something we haven't seen before. Have you ever looked at the "st_dev" values? Try once - look at what it returns for a NFS-mounted filesystem. Ponder. Notice how it already is NOT stable across reboots. In other words, the stuff you're complaining about is all stuff that nobody has _ever_ been able to rely on, and that has nothign to do with udev or anythign else. It all just shows how 100% right I am for saying that you cannot rely on stable numbers. So I repeat: calm down, and think it through. Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/