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Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 12:21:01 -0700
From: Mike Fedyk <mfedyk@matchmail.com>
To: Tim Jansen <tim@tjansen.de>
Cc: Patrick Mochel <mochel@osdl.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [RFC] New Driver Model for 2.5
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On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 09:02:09PM +0200, Tim Jansen wrote:
> On Friday 19 October 2001 20:26, Patrick Mochel wrote:
> > There are equivalents in USB. But, neither of them are globally unique
> > identifiers for the device. That doesn't necessarily mean that one
> > couldn't be ascertained from the device; ethernet cards do have MAC
> > addresses. But, I don't think that many will have a ID/serial number.
> > [...]
> > Which leads me to the question: what real benefit does this have? Why
> > would you ever want to do a global search in kernel space for a particular
> > device? 
> 
> For example for harddisks. You usually want them to be mounted in the same 
> directory. 

When is /etc/fstab going to support this?

#Or if you have several printers of the same type connected your
> computer you need a way of identifying them. 

/dev/ttyS0 and /dev/lp0

>Or for ethernet adapters: 
> because each is connected to a different network, so you need to assign 
> different IP addresses to them.
>

I haven't seen anything assign ethX assign a certain order, except for
ordered module loading, and then if there are multiple devices with the same
driver, the order is chosen by bus scanning order, or module option.

> Actually most USB harddisks, printers and network adapters have unique serial 
> number (you have to be careful though as some claim to have a serial number, 
> but it is not unique).
>

How different do you expect this new driver model to be?

Does anyone know if devfs will, or has any plans to support any of the above
features?
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