Fw: Followup on devfsd

[Kevin O'Gorman]

I was wondering about devfs, inasmuch as gentoo seems to depend on it.
Much as I dislike devfs for being so weird, I'm just starting with
gentoo and don't want the boat rocking too much while I'm getting
my bearings.

++ kevin


On Thu, 18 Mar 2004, Collins Richey wrote:

> Here's a cross posting with useful information about devfs which may
> not be quite so deprecated after all. 
> 
> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2004 10:00:02 -0800
> From: Alan <alan at ufies.org>
> To: gentoo-user at lists.gentoo.org
> Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] udev and devfsd
> 
> 
> On Thu, Mar 18, 2004 at 05:14:51PM +0000, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> > On Thu, 18 Mar 2004 11:54:10 -0500 (EST) Ajai Khattri <ajai at bway.net>
> > wrote:
> > | Pros and cons of udev over devfsd ?
> > 
> > Devfsd is unmaintained, buggy and has a whole stack of nasty race
> > conditions, whereas udev is clean and actively developed. Oh yeah, and
> > udev will work with 2.7 series kernels when they start, whereas devfsd
> > won't :)
> 
> Based on this article[0] in the latest LJ, devfs is still alive and
> kicking and is not going to die away...
> 
>    "Ian Kent has (for the moment at least) accepted the role of DevFS
>    maintainer. This is a sharp reversal of the previous trend, which was
>   to let DevFS die a quiet death and replace it with a similar feature,
>   such as udev. In fact, Greg Kroah-Hartman has been making regular 
>   udev releases, with an eye toward exactly this possibility. However, 
>   in spite of DevFS' flaws, including some that are apparently so severe
>   as to be virtually unfixable, DevFS still provides features that no 
>   other system has yet been able to surpass. Folks like Ian have begun 
>   to advocate keeping DevFS in the kernel and fixing whatever 
>   problems it may have, however difficult they may turn out to be."
> 
> 
> [0] http://linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=7340
> 
> 

-- 
Dr. Kevin O'Gorman  (805) 756-2986  mailto:kogorman at calpoly.edu
Home Page: http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~kogorman