Re: Accessing disks via their serial numbers.

At 6:43 PM +0000 6/27/06, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

I don't think we should allow names that are not "under
control", and by not "under control" I mean device names
which the device driver writer doesn't control or at the
very least sanitize.

For instance, if you want to create names that match random
strings, like the tape labels in your robot, the sensible
and security concious device driver writer makes sure the
names have a unique prefix:

/dev/tape/$label

or similar, so that devfs(8) rules can be written in a
surefire way.

This strikes me as a worthwhile idea. Leave the device-
entries in /dev as they are now, but then create some
sub-directories which would hold the more arbitrary (or
"non-sanitized") names.
/dev/info/disk/serial-num
or /dev/info/geom/whatever

etc. That way there's only one new entry in /dev, and
people could just de-permit that directory (or turn the
feature off) if they didn't want or need to have that
extra info available.

--
Garance Alistair Drosehn = drosehn@xxxxxxx
Senior Systems Programmer or gad@xxxxxxxxxxx
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Troy, NY; USA
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