Is there any plan to adopt devtmpfs ?

[Polytropon]

On Thu, 5 Mar 2015 21:08:01 +0530, Manish Jain wrote:
> The system was likable enough, till I found 
> a lot of hardware would not work - my canon printer gets detected in 
> dmesg, but cups cannot locate any local printer; [...]

Canon is known for producing printers which require
non-standard drivers, they usually require more work
to get them working. In few cases, it's even impossible.



> [...] my APC UPS is able to 
> perform a self test but is unable to shut down the system in case of a 
> power outage on account of some communication failure re battery levels; 
> and finally my keyboard stops responding. All these are USB devices, and 
> I for some time believed that there might some problem with the USB stack.

Also consider that there are problem with the hardware
which does not conform to existing USB specifications
and protocols in favour of a manufacturer-specific way
of doing things.



> Just for kicks, I decided to try Linux to see if my stuff works. On 
> Debian 7.8, neither the printer works nor does the UPS. However, with 
> Ubuntu 14.10 the printer detection and installation was a cinch.

So you have good chances to get the printer working on
FreeBSD. It might be a bit of work, though.



> I did 
> not test the UPS, but I am sure that would have worked too - but the 
> Unity desktop is too painful for me to verify this fully.

I know what you mean. ;-)



> The one thing I noticed about Ubuntu 14.10 is that it uses a lot of 
> virtual filesystems, headed by devtmpfs. Is it possible that a lot of 
> hardware that currently is not working smoothly on FreeBSD will liven up 
> simply by migrating one step ahead of devfs ? If yes, is there a 
> possibility that we might be getting devtmpfs in 10.2/11.x ?

I don't think so. However, some hardware can magically be
brought to life by using Linux "drivers" and FreeBSD's Linux
ABI. Last year, I got a Canon Lasershot printer working that
way. :-)

Just a sidenote: FreeBSD and Linux are different operating
systems, so it's still possible that something which works
flawlessly on Linux does not work on FreeBSD, because the
software has been made without taking care of portability
or interoperability.



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...