Subject: Re: w cmd on energy saving machines: problem and proposed solution
To: Ignatios Souvatzis <ignatios@theory.cs.uni-bonn.de>
From: Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>
List: tech-userlevel
Date: 06/20/2001 12:23:21
On Wed, 20 Jun 2001, Ignatios Souvatzis wrote:

: Actually, I tried both tar and sh MAKEDEV (where MAKEDEV is copied to /sbin on
: my setup), and found that sh MAKEDEV is not slower.

Well, I typically trim down the contents of /dev (I don't need SCSI disks,
USB devices, or 64 PTYs on a Shark, for instance); in any case, it's a
rather useful hack without the presence of a "devfs" [ahem!].

: My original question applies to my home, diskful sharks. I want them to boot
: a bit faster than running MAKEDEV or extracting the /dev.

Well, changing the behavior of w in the way suggested isn't the right way to
do it.  Either "live with it," or at worst, it should get some kind of idle
timestamp from the tty driver itself in place of the atime.  Idle time is
defined by interaction, regardless of process activity.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling <tv@wasabisystems.com>  *  Wasabi NetBSD:  Run with it.
-- NetBSD 1.5 now available on CD-ROM  --  http://www.wasabisystems.com/