On Saturday 26 December 2020 at 19:04:51, Didier Kryn wrote:
> I guess it's historical: historically there was only character devices and
> block devices, and no provision for other categories, and maybe no provision
> in the bitfields which qualify the associated special files.
Sounds entirely plausible. I, too, have long wondered why ethX devices were
never represented under /dev
> These device special files are used in particular to write to and read from
> and I think nobody wants this to happen with network devices. AFAIU, there
> are a lot of devices which don't show up in /dev, like all the intermediate
> devices, the ones which handle USB, SCSI, SATA, PCI.
Hm...
/dev/ttyUSBX
/dev/sdX
/dev/srX
/dev/hdX
I can't really think of a sensible category for PCI, since it's not so much a
family of devices as just a way of plugging things in. I mean, we never had
/dev entries for ISA, VESA, AGP (and probably many more I don't think of right
now), so why should the PC bus appear in /dev?
What's important is the thing that's plugged in to PCI, and that appears as
/dev/lpX, /dev/ttyX, /dev/sdX, etc.
I also see no reason to list a USB hub, or a PCI bus, as a "device". It's not
like anything in userspace needs to talk to it, and that's what /dev is for,
yes?
Antony.
--
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