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Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 23:37:19 +0100
To: Andries Brouwer <aebr@win.tue.nl>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>, Rob Love <rml@ximian.com>,
       rob@landley.net, Pascal Schmidt <der.eremit@email.de>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>
Subject: Re: udev and devfs - The final word
Message-ID: <20040104223719.GA1388@hh.idb.hist.no>
References: <Pine.LNX.4.58.0401022033010.10561@home.osdl.org> <20040103141029.B3393@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <Pine.LNX.4.58.0401031423180.2162@home.osdl.org> <20040104000840.A3625@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <Pine.LNX.4.58.0401031802420.2162@home.osdl.org> <20040104034934.A3669@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <Pine.LNX.4.58.0401031856130.2162@home.osdl.org> <20040104142111.A11279@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <Pine.LNX.4.58.0401041302080.2162@home.osdl.org> <20040104230104.A11439@pclin040.win.tue.nl>
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From: Helge Hafting <helgehaf@aitel.hist.no>
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On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 11:01:04PM +0100, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 04, 2004 at 01:05:20PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> 
> > Oh, _I_ always understood. You were the one that was arguing for
> > stable numbers as somehow important.
> 
> Indeed. I said "preferably stable across reboots".
> 
> > I'm just telling you that they aren't stable, and that a
> > user application that depends on their stability or
> > their uniqueness is BROKEN.
> 
> Surprise! Are you leaving POSIX? Or ditching NFS?
> Or demanding that NFS servers must never reboot?
> 
> A common Unix idiom is testing for the identity
> of two files by comparing st_ino and st_dev.
> A broken idiom?
> 
> No idea what part of our Unix heritage you now have decided to call broken.
> 

You worry about /dev over nfs, with the server booting in the middle of
such a comparison?  This can work even with randomized device numbers,
just don't let that nfs server populate the exported /dev itself.

Let the client(s) run udev, and have one /dev for each on persistent 
storage.  If the nfs server reboots it simply keeps serving /dev's
in whatever shape the clients set them up with.

Helge Hafting