>> I suggested sharing of major/minor numbers a long time ago.  [...]

> Another way (which I prefer) is to eliminate MAKEDEV and let the
> kernel make the device nodes for us, possibly in a special filesystem
> for that purpose, automatically mounted on /dev/.

I really really dislike this.

Why?  Because it means the user-level device names are wired into the
kernel.  Because it means I can't "ln -s kd ttykd" to fix "ps atkd" on
the sun3 port as a stopgap measure until ps is fixed right.  Because it
means I can't "chmod 666 /dev/*sd4*" so that anybody can access the zip
drive.  Because it means I can't "chgrp backup /dev/rsd*" so that I can
have a group dedicated to backups to read the disks, instead of having
to use the provided operator group which owns ghod-only-knows what
else.

Or if devfs does support the above, it means the results won't survive
the next reboot.

To me as a sysadmin, this is unacceptable.  devfs may be useful,
perhaps; I'd actually prefer to make it part of kernfs (/kern/dev, say)
and then if you really want to use it as your /dev, symlink /dev to
/kern/dev (and create a few things in /kern/dev on the root filesystem,
to be hidden by the kernfs mount, enough things for it to come up far
enough to mount kernfs).  Personally, I'd create a database of things
in devfs I don't want in /dev and things I want in /dev even though
devfs doesn't have them, then check /dev against devfs and this list at
boot time, warning of differences but not touching anything.

					der Mouse

			       mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca
		     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B