Re: [gentoo-dev] Kernel sources thread

[Greg KH]

On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 06:34:21AM -0400, Travis Tilley wrote:
> On Wednesday 21 July 2004 03:24 am, Travis Tilley wrote:
> > On Wednesday 21 July 2004 01:28 am, Greg KH wrote:
> > > On Sun, Jul 18, 2004 at 06:53:29PM -0400, Travis Tilley wrote:
> > > If you have _any_ issues with udev, please let the developers and the
> > > linux-hotplug-devel mailing list know about it.  Otherwise it will not
> > > get fixed, and you will never be happy.
> >
> > just dont -force- udev on me and i'll be happy.
> >
> > > Oh, and that reminds me to go make up a "delete devfs" kernel patch to
> > > send off to lkml, just to force the issue :)
> >
> > heh.
>
> ok, trying to be just a bit more constructive. :)
>
> 1) udev is either ready or it isnt.

No.  udev is ready.  It's the fact that the kernel might not be fully
ready, depending on the devices you use.

> the fact that you need to use a device
> tarball for entries udev doesnt support shows me that it isnt ready.

No, there is no way to support devices that don't have sysfs support.
For some of them (like 3rd party drivers), that will never happen.

> what's
> the point of using a device management system if you're going to just dump a
> bunch of extra dev entries in there anyway? if udev were ready, this wouldnt
> be necessary.

Great, I challenge you to fix this :)
Or at least file bugs for it...

But for me, and all of my machines, that tarball isn't needed at all.
And for 95% of the world, it should work.  It's that last 5% that is
going to take some kernel work to fix, due to the scarcity of the
hardware being used.

> 2)
> ayanami portcvs # ldd `which udevd`
>         libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x0000002a9566d000)
>         /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 => /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2
> (0x0000002a95556000)
> ayanami portcvs # emerge udev -pv | grep static

udev can be built with the included klibc library, which makes this
whole issue moot.  I've been hesitant to change the ebuild to do this,
due to ia64 issues with klibc.  Hopefully the next version of klibc (and
hence udev) should fix this.  Then I'll enable it for everyone.

And, yes, I agree that this is an issue, that's why klibc is there :)

> 3) devfs isnt going away any time soon, and there will be people like me who
> dont think it's a good idea to risk bugs for no apparent benefit.

devfs is broken, has known bugs, is unmaintained, and has security
issues.  What more do you want?

Oh, and it will go away soon, see my lkml post.

> 4) it makes sense to keep supporting devfs even after it's ripped out of the
> kernel, which i think isnt until after the /next/ stable kernel series.

The idea of a development/stable kernel series has just changed.  See
the lwn.net writeup of the kernel summit for more information about
this.

> bah, i've been suckered into installing udev... so i might as well keep it
> until something breaks. i disabled the tarball hack since it was making /dev
> ugly and cluttered... though i admit it seems to be more ready than i thought
> it was. at least for now i can have both and always make devfs mount on
> boot... please dont think seriously about removing support for that. at least
> not until after we all move over to 2.10 anyways. :/

Good, glad it's working for you :)

thanks,

greg k-h

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