/dev/shm

[Marcin Dalecki]

Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 01:58:19AM +0200, Marcin Dalecki wrote:
> 
>>Myron J. Mayfield wrote:
>>
>>>I attempted to install the linux java sapgui on FreeBSD 5.0, but the jar
>>>file only unpacked part of it.  I then copied the files from my Redhat 9
>>>machine.  I linked up all the linux libraries needed and attempted to
>>>start it.  It gives me an error saying cant find /dev/shm.  I tried
>>>adding this to /dev but was unable to.  Does anyone have any
>>>information?  Thank you.  I am somewhat new to FreeBSD but have used
>>>linux for Many years.
>>
>>For some unexcused reason there is the trend in Linux to represent
>>everything as kind of a wired half finished pseudo file system. /proc pipe
>>devicefs sysctl and so on... The list is really long. Even shared memmory is
>>mapped to  ehrm.... a filesystem. This is "expected" to be mounted at 
>>/dev/shm by the system. You can't expect FreeBSD to follow this path...
> 
> 
> Linux isn't the only system that does this (learn a little, criticize less).

There is a great span between everything and some things where it makes sense.
Just please compare the devfs *implementations* between FreeBSD and Linux
to see the difference.

Some examples:

/etc/rc.d/init.d# cat /proc/meminfo
         total:    used:    free:  shared: buffers:  cached:
Mem:  526184448 515764224 10420224        0 43528192 353251328
Swap: 536862720        0 536862720
MemTotal:       513852 kB
MemFree:         10176 kB
MemShared:           0 kB
Buffers:         42508 kB
Cached:         344972 kB
SwapCached:          0 kB
Active:         332328 kB
ActiveAnon:      79088 kB
ActiveCache:    253240 kB
Inact_dirty:      8932 kB
Inact_laundry:       0 kB
Inact_clean:    125308 kB
Inact_target:    93312 kB
HighTotal:           0 kB
HighFree:            0 kB
LowTotal:       513852 kB
LowFree:         10176 kB
SwapTotal:      524280 kB
SwapFree:       524280 kB
/etc/rc.d/init.d#

Wonderfull well tought out conscise and dense design isn't it?

Or maybe:
/etc/rc.d/init.d# cat /proc/filesystems
nodev   rootfs
nodev   bdev
nodev   proc
nodev   sockfs
nodev   tmpfs
nodev   shm
nodev   pipefs
         ext2
nodev   ramfs
         iso9660
nodev   devpts
         ext3
nodev   usbdevfs
nodev   usbfs
nodev   binfmt_misc
/etc/rc.d/init.d#

And this is 2.4 kernel not the "upcomming" 2.6

Oh and I know well about the motivation behing /dev/shm - the excuse is called
"POSIX shm semantics". Which are broken in first place and never got over the
"standard" draft state.