Subject: Re: vnconfig is broken (was: vnd is broken?)
To: Peter Seebach <seebs@plethora.net>
From: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
List: current-users
Date: 05/10/2005 17:45:40
In message <200505102108.j4AL8xEo023112@guild.plethora.net>, Peter Seebach writ
es:
>>Make sure you don't have a file called vnd0 or vnd0d in the current directory
>.
>
>This seems sorta crazy.  I would assume that the sane default would be to
>assume that I want a device, and the system knows where devices come from.
>
>Having vnconfig check . is like having the shell check for a file called
>"./stdout" if I type "2>&1".  If I want to specify a file in the current
>directory, I can.
>
>This behavior makes the by-far-most-common case unpredictable.  That seems
>bad.  The Principle of Least Astonishment dictates that devices should be
>taken from /dev by default.

More to the point -- what is the namespace for the argument?  Are we 
naming files or vnd devices?  If the former, it makes sense to look in 
. or whereever; if the latter -- and that's my opinion -- we shouldn't 
worry about anything else.

		--Prof. Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb