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[Robert Watson]

On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, Alfred Perlstein wrote:

> * Robert Watson <rwatson at freebsd.org> [031117 10:13] wrote:
> > My general conclusion was that this over-complicated our VFS
> > substantially, and that the struct file state in Linux was generally used
> > only for multiply instantiated devices.  With devfs cloning, all the cases
> > I was interested in (things like /dev vmware nodes) are addressed.  Since
> > none of our non-specfs nodes required any notion of state, I found I was
> > touching a lot of code to minimal benefit.  What's your motivation for
> > adding this support, and can it be added in a way that doesn't introduce
> > new arguments to most VOPs, and introduce a host of potential bugs?  I
> > don't doubt it can be done right, but it's a fairly complex solution that
> > has to be motivated by complex requirements... 
> 
> I just wanted to support the way that Linux does stuff.  Are you saying
> that it's taken care of? 

I'm saying we can support most of the interesting things I know of that
need this state already using devfs clone support.  I'm wondering if you
have in mind anything further that can't be accomplished with clone
support.  I.e., something that requires session state for something other
than /dev entries? 

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert at fledge.watson.org      Network Associates Laboratories