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Date: Tue, 15 May 2001 17:13:12 -0700
From: David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: LANANA: To Pending Device Number Registrants
To: Alexander Viro <viro@math.psu.edu>
Cc: mjfrazer@somanetworks.com, lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
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> > I suppose that for network interface names, some convention for
> > interface ioctls would suffice to solve that "identify" step.  PCI
> > devices would return the slot_name, USB devices need something
> > like a patch I posted to linux-usb-devel a few months back.
> 
> This is crap.

Only the ioctl part, though I confess to trolling for a better proposal ... :)


> If you want to do it - do it right. Accessing /dev/eth/<n>/MAC
> is trivial. Wanking with ioctls is not. And populating such tree
> is as simple as it gets.

For links without a stable MAC, /.../net/<ifname>/{pci-slot,usb-path,...}
is more like it, but I think that class of solution should be fine.

Now ... what should be the roles of "regular" file ops, devfs, usbdevfs,
procfs, and "devreg" ?  That's the part that doesn't seem simple yet.
I'd expect a few rounds of code/design changes.

- Dave