On Fri, 4 Sep 1998, Eduardo E. Horvath wrote:

: > Make /dev be mounted dynamically inside the kernel at boot, before init is
: > run.  This guarantees the existence of /dev/console, and allows the
: > underlying /dev directory to be completely empty.
: The only problem I see in my original idea is somehow getting the devfs
: filesystem mounted underneath /dev.  But I think mount should be capable
: of doing this.

I preferred the idea of mounting it _over_ /dev, or at least not using the
same semantics as the current unionfs, as /dev may be mounted on a
filesystem that is:

- not capable of whiteouts
- not capable of device nodes

I'd _really_ like to see some kind of layer that can "translate" regular
files into device nodes somehow ... for the purposes of a NFS /dev.  Real
device nodes on a NFS-mounted /dev are, as said before, dangerous and a
serious security risk.

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)