*BSD News Article 12756


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!uunet!ihz.compuserve.com!proven
From: proven@csi.compuserve.com (Chris Provenzano)
Subject: Driver Configuration
Message-ID: <C3wwDx.7KA@csi.compuserve.com>
Organization: CompuServe Incorporated
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 1993 03:58:39 GMT
Lines: 39


Well I've heard some interesting suggetions on the device configuration
problem, and here is my assessment and solution.

Problem 1
Automatic device driver recoginition at boot time.
I.e. you make a kernel with a new device and the next time you boot it you
want it visible automatically.

Problem 2
Computer crashes, and dev files have wrong permissions.

Problem 3
MAKEDEV script is a crock, and should be punted.

Constraint 1
All devices should be in the /dev/directory.
Does anybody ever make devices outside the /dev directory? 
I don't think so so this isn't much of a constraint.

>From this the solution to me is obvious. Make a device filesystem.
The kerner configuration files will have a name, uid, gid, mode, and type
information in the conf file. Config will make a device table, and at boot
time the device filesystem is mounted on /dev. There is no need for
mknod anymore since all the devices will appear autommagically at mount.
MAKEDEV is definitely unnecessary.

Well this is just a suggestion.

CAP

PS could someone put me on the bsd-config mailing list. My requests
keep bouncing.

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