Gentoo Archives: gentoo-dev

From: Christian Birchinger <joker@g.o>
To: gentoo-dev@g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-dev] udev implementation
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2003 07:43:15
Message-Id: 20031021074313.GB16951@netswarm.net
In Reply to: [gentoo-dev] udev implementation by "C. Brewer"
1 You're totaly right. udev is really not usable yet. I was happy
2 when i first saw the planed features. But once i got the
3 FAQ/Docs i was really disapointed. And this disapointment
4 increased after i downloaded the tarball.
5
6 I highly suggest not moving to udev yet. Even if devfs is marked
7 obsolete in kernel it's far better than udev which is in alpha
8 state. Ofcourse one day we will ne forced to adopt udev so it's
9 not a bad idea to check it out etc. but please don't switch to
10 it now. It's really not ready and causes far more problems than
11 devfs.
12
13 On Mon, Oct 20, 2003 at 10:56:19PM -0700, C. Brewer wrote:
14 Content-Description: signed data
15 > I tried out the 0.2 version of udev today, and I realize that its way rough
16 > so early in the development, but I must say I was disappointed with it's
17 > current implementation ( and the lousy attitude of the udev FAQ "if you don't
18 > like it stick with devfs" didn't help). Currently I have some small concerns
19 > about adopting this as a whole ( somewhere on down the line)-
20 >
21 > 1)The present package consists of a tarball with just about every device node
22 > you could make (excepting small things like sound, ppp, more than 4 ttyS*'s)
23 > Is this going to be a standard, or will some form of intuitive /dev entries be
24 > imp'd? IIRC, the tarball is about 1.4k device nodes, and I think I need 100
25 > on the outside.
26 >
27 > 2) Since this won't automatically create these nodes ( unless a hotplug event
28 > occurs), or load the dependent modules, doesn't this seem like a step back to
29 > the old system, but with a name-mapping steroided hotplug?
30 >
31 > 3) Don't get me wrong..I'm not flaming the package,and I realize devfs is crap
32 > as well..but the score is devfsd( crap but makes nodes and loads mods on the
33 > fly) and udev (maps names and supposedly does stuff with hotplugging that
34 > hotplug never amounted to.( and is dev'd by the hotplug peeps?ironic)). All
35 > that aside, what is udev going to do for the desktop? I have devices I could
36 > swap(USB) but with most comps coming with like 6 usb ports, I cant see more
37 > than some pendrive swapping at user level. Yeah, I know theres peeps out
38 > there with 80 pendrives and 8 hot-swappable hdd's, but is this the majority
39 > of users? For the likely many of us who dont need to swap and have had the
40 > same hardware on the same nodes that dont ever change..what does udev bring
41 > to the table?
42 >
43 > Forgive me if I've gone delusional.. I was just under the impression that udev
44 > was going to do everything that devfsd does now _and_ add name mapping, and
45 > apparently I was wrong. I'm just planning for the future since seeing the
46 > udev changes going into our init system.. we got no choice about the devfs
47 > and I feel it's going the same way for udev. I'm not trying to slight the
48 > obviously hard work that was put into it, but what about choice? to devfs or
49 > not to devfs? to udev or not to udev? Or is it merely choice with package
50 > selection, and not with the overall package that is Gentoo?
51 >
52 > Criticism appreciated, discussion welcomed, craziness and flames- please pipe
53 > to /dev/null:)
54 > --
55 > Chuck Brewer
56 > Registered Linux User #284015
57 > Get my gpg public key at pgp.mit.edu!! Encrypted e-mail preferred.
58 >
59 >
60
61
62
63 --
64 gentoo-dev@g.o mailing list

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-dev] udev implementation Jon Portnoy <avenj@g.o>