Date: Wed, 19 Oct 2005 19:36:53 +0800
From: Coywolf Qi Hunt <qiyong@fc-cn.com>
To: Mathieu Segaud <matt@regala.cx>
Cc: Erik Mouw <erik@harddisk-recovery.com>,
       Karel Kulhavy <clock@twibright.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: number of eth0 device
Message-ID: <20051019113653.GA3621@localhost.localdomain>
References: <20051019103135.GA9765@kestrel> <20051019104240.GC31526@harddisk-recovery.com> <87psq1da2j.fsf@barad-dur.minas-morgul.org>
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On Wed, Oct 19, 2005 at 01:23:48PM +0200, Mathieu Segaud wrote:
> Erik Mouw <erik@harddisk-recovery.com> disait derni?rement 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"   

I think there're other nodes in /dev on which normal file
operations do not make sense either.
-- 
Coywolf
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