Question about labels/names

[CyberLeo Kitsana]

Hi!

In the interests of keeping things neat and tidy, I recently, completely
at random, randomly included a / character in a geom name (glabel or
gmirror) and discovered that it quite happily created a subdirectory
under /dev (/dev/mirror or /dev/label, respectively).

This seems like a useful method of keeping things tidy, but it smells
like a potentially unintended behavior; specifically because removing
the label or mirror does not remove the associated directory, and thus
recreations fail miserably. No problem for my usage of this feature, but
it was a surprise during tinkering and setup.

So, the question is this: Is the presence of hierarchial structures in
geom provider names an intended feature that can be relied upon, and
simply has a bug with regards to removing old provider names; or can I
expect my FreeBSD systems to mysteriously fail to mount root with some
kernel update in the future?

Thank you.

-- 
Fuzzy love,
-CyberLeo
Technical Administrator
CyberLeo.Net Webhosting
http://www.CyberLeo.Net
<CyberLeo at CyberLeo.Net>

Furry Peace! - http://wwww.fur.com/peace/
-------------- next part --------------
[cyberleo at nyoka ~]$ glabel list
Geom name: da0
Providers:
1. Name: label/nyoka/
   Mediasize: 8589934080 (8.0G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r5w5e5
   secoffset: 0
   offset: 0
   seclength: 16777215
   length: 8589934080
   index: 0
Consumers:
1. Name: da0
   Mediasize: 8589934592 (8.0G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r5w5e6

Geom name: da1
Providers:
1. Name: label/nyoka/srv
   Mediasize: 8589934080 (8.0G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e1
   secoffset: 0
   offset: 0
   seclength: 16777215
   length: 8589934080
   index: 0
Consumers:
1. Name: da1
   Mediasize: 8589934592 (8.0G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e2

[cyberleo at nyoka ~]$ ls -laRF /dev/label
total 2
dr-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  512 Dec 31  1969 ./
dr-xr-xr-x  6 root  wheel  512 Dec 31  1969 ../
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  512 Dec 31  1969 nyoka/

/dev/label/nyoka:
ls: : No such file or directory
total 1
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel          512 Dec 31  1969 ./
dr-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel          512 Dec 31  1969 ../
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0,  88 Oct 12 03:27 a
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0,  89 Oct 12 03:27 b
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0,  90 Oct 12 03:27 c
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0,  91 Oct 12 03:27 d
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0,  92 Oct 12 03:27 e
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0,  93 Oct 12 03:27 f
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0,  83 Oct 12 03:32 srv

[cyberleo at nyoka ~]$ bsdlabel /dev/label/nyoka/c
# /dev/label/nyoka/c:
8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:  1048576       16    4.2BSD     2048 16384     8 
  b:  1504912  1048592      swap                    
  c: 16777215        0    unused        0     0         # "raw" part, don't edit
  d:  2848468  2553504    4.2BSD     2048 16384 28552 
  e:  1048576  5402272    4.2BSD     2048 16384     8 
  f: 10326367  6450848    4.2BSD     2048 16384 28552 
-------------- next part --------------
[cyberleo at paka ~]$ gmirror list
Geom name: paka/
State: COMPLETE
Components: 2
Balance: split
Slice: 4096
Flags: NONE
GenID: 0
SyncID: 1
ID: 1693380488
Providers:
1. Name: mirror/paka/
   Mediasize: 249999999488 (233G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r5w5e5
Consumers:
1. Name: da0
   Mediasize: 250000000000 (233G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e1
   State: ACTIVE
   Priority: 0
   Flags: DIRTY
   GenID: 0
   SyncID: 1
   ID: 2271483065
2. Name: da1
   Mediasize: 250000000000 (233G)
   Sectorsize: 512
   Mode: r1w1e1
   State: ACTIVE
   Priority: 0
   Flags: DIRTY
   GenID: 0
   SyncID: 1
   ID: 1683486829

[cyberleo at paka ~]$ ls -laRF /dev/mirror
total 2
dr-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  512 Oct 25 18:05 ./
dr-xr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  512 Oct 25 18:05 ../
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  512 Oct 25 18:05 paka/

/dev/mirror/paka:
ls: : No such file or directory
total 1
dr-xr-xr-x  2 root  wheel          512 Oct 25 18:05 ./
dr-xr-xr-x  3 root  wheel          512 Oct 25 18:05 ../
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 101 Oct 25 18:05 a
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 102 Oct 25 18:05 b
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 103 Oct 25 18:05 c
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 104 Oct 25 18:05 d
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 105 Oct 25 18:05 e
crw-r-----  1 root  operator    0, 106 Oct 25 18:05 f

[cyberleo at paka ~]$ bsdlabel /dev/mirror/paka/c
# /dev/mirror/paka/c:
8 partitions:
#        size   offset    fstype   [fsize bsize bps/cpg]
  a:  1572864       16    4.2BSD     2048 16384 28528 
  b:  2097152  1572880      swap                    
  c: 488281249        0    unused        0     0         # "raw" part, don't edit
  d:  8388608  3670032    4.2BSD     2048 16384 28528 
  e:  2097152 12058640    4.2BSD     2048 16384 28528 
  f: 474125457 14155792    4.2BSD     2048 16384 28528