re: amd64 kernel, i386 userland

[matthew green <mrg%eterna.com.au@localhost>]

> The easier way would therefore just be to remove the content of /dev and
> let init do the work, but unfortunately, init uses MAKEDEV. Perhaps it
> could be changed to get the data from kernel. sysctl kern.drivers seems
> a good starting point. 
> 
> Or perhaps what we need is just a mount_devfs command, that would
> mount_tmpfs, retreive data from kernel using sysctl and perform mknod(2)
> to create the devices.

extract what from the kernel?  the definition of major() and minor()
for this platform?  that's the (big) part of why i386 and amd64 have
different numbers here -- fvdl was wanting to make amd64 have more
regular major/minor split in dev_t, but the end result is horrible.

MAKEDEV has a lot of info that the kernel does not, about what devices
have what names and what permissions, and what aliases.


i think this could be fixed by introducing new disk major numbers for
both i386 and amd64 that are associated with the same definition of
major() and minor(), but i've never gotten around to or found someone
else willing to code this up.


.mrg.