Bill Studenmund wrote this message on Wed, Oct 26, 2005 at 10:22 -0700:
> On Mon, Oct 24, 2005 at 10:35:47PM +0200, Hans Petter Selasky wrote:
> > 
> > Main features:
> > 
> > - Implements FreeBSD's devfs on NetBSD.
> 
> In the past, we (NetBSD folks) have talked about a devfs. One issue that 
> has come up (I'll be honest, I've raised it a lot) is a desire to retain 
> permission changes across boots, and to tie devices (when possible) to a 
> device-specific attribute rather than a probe order.
> 
> Does FreeBSD's devfs support locators and persistent information? Are 
> there plans to support something like that, if not?

Well, there are two camps (there may be more, but I can only think of
these two) to the locators and persistent info...  One is the geom_label
route, where the devices self identify, so no matter what adX a device
appears as, you can just mount /dev/ufs/fsname...  The other of course
is to allow you to wire down devices... which some things are better
about allowing than others..  like you can wire down da and sio devices...

Though one things I miss on FreeBSD that MacOSX has is that when you
plug in a USB to serial adapter, MacOSX includes the serial number in
the device name: /dev/tty.usbserial-FTC8P121, which is convient...

-- 
  John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579

     "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."