Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1750764AbVJSLXu (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Oct 2005 07:23:50 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1750773AbVJSLXu (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Oct 2005 07:23:50 -0400 Received: from barad-dur.crans.org ([138.231.141.187]:37532 "EHLO barad-dur.minas-morgul.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750766AbVJSLXt convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Wed, 19 Oct 2005 07:23:49 -0400 From: "Mathieu Segaud" To: Erik Mouw Cc: Karel Kulhavy , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: number of eth0 device References: <20051019103135.GA9765@kestrel> <20051019104240.GC31526@harddisk-recovery.com> X-PGP-KeyID: 0x2E13FCA8 X-PGP-Fingerprint: D41C FC4F 7374 D3FA A121 9182 90AC 62B0 2E13 FCA8 Date: mer, 19 oct 2005 13:23:48 +0200 In-Reply-To: <20051019104240.GC31526@harddisk-recovery.com> (Erik Mouw's message of "Wed, 19 Oct 2005 12:42:40 +0200") Message-ID: <87psq1da2j.fsf@barad-dur.minas-morgul.org> User-Agent: Gnus/5.110004 (No Gnus v0.4) Emacs/22.0.50 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1381 Lines: 37 Erik Mouw disait dernièrement que : > On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 12:31:35PM +0200, Karel Kulhavy wrote: >> I am looking into Documentation/devices.txt in 2.4.25 and eth0 is not listed >> there. If I grep "eth", I get only >> >> 38 char Myricom PCI Myrinet board >> [...] >> "This device is used for status query, board control and "user level >> packet I/O." This board is also accessible as a standard networking >> "eth" device. " >> >> and then >> >> /dev/pethr0 >> >> Is eth0 some kind of special device that doesn't have any number >> assigned? > > Yes, there's no such thing as /dev/eth0, network interfaces have their > own namespace. Linux uses the defacto standard BSD socket interface for > networking, so blame the BSD people for violating the "everything is a > file" rule. well, the way NIC's behave kind of forbids this taken from Linux Device Drivers, 3rd Edition, page 497 "The normal file operations (read, write, and so on) do not make sense when applied to network interfaces, so it is not possible to apply the Unix ''everything is a file'' approach to them" -- Mathieu - 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/