Review/Test: Pseudo-device unit number management patch

[Julian Elischer]

On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 09, 2004 at 01:03:18AM -0700, M. Warner Losh wrote:
> +> s/I/we/  Others have signed off on this model.  Maybe you could
> +> explain how such a device would exist, and its exact semantics.  With
> +> a cloning device that phk is talking about, you open /dev/foo, and
> +> /dev/foo0, /dev/foo1, etc are automatically created.  This is how
> +> things work on other systems for cloning devices.
> +> 
> +> One could argue the wisdom of making the tunnel device clonable (I
> +> happen to agree with it, but I can see the oppsoing argument).
> +> However, sensible cloning semantics have been well understood for
> +> years.  BSD is very late to the party in not having these sorts of
> +> devices before now.
> 
> Maybe more human-friendly way will be to create /dev/foo0 without
> request and if someone will open /dev/foo0, device /dev/foo1 will be
> created... Just an idea.

That's EXACTLY what nmdm does now..
(actually it creates 0,1,2,3 and when you open 0, it creates 5 etc..)

The changes remove this behaviour, breaking my little tcl/tk
script that presents the user with a list of exisiting nmdm 'A' entries
to select from.

> 
> -- 
> Pawel Jakub Dawidek                       http://www.FreeBSD.org
> pjd at FreeBSD.org                           http://garage.freebsd.pl
> FreeBSD committer                         Am I Evil? Yes, I Am!
>