From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([208.92.234.80] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1RijJ5-0006Fz-G9 for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 09:08:19 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3F86321C03F; Thu, 5 Jan 2012 09:08:06 +0000 (UTC) Received: from svr-us4.tirtonadi.com (svr-us4.tirtonadi.com [69.65.43.212]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id AE56521C12A for ; Thu, 5 Jan 2012 09:07:08 +0000 (UTC) Received: from mail-we0-f181.google.com ([74.125.82.181]) by svr-us4.tirtonadi.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RijHx-001dRd-Qz for gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 16:07:09 +0700 Received: by werm12 with SMTP id m12so237774wer.40 for ; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:07:04 -0800 (PST) Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 Received: by 10.216.139.204 with SMTP id c54mr578027wej.13.1325754424404; Thu, 05 Jan 2012 01:07:04 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.223.78.208 with HTTP; Thu, 5 Jan 2012 01:07:04 -0800 (PST) In-Reply-To: References: <20111115062115.GA3262@waltdnes.org> <20111121104724.GC7461@waltdnes.org> <20111201194544.GD4455@waltdnes.org> <20120103100445.GD1961@waltdnes.org> <20120103123209.GB2410@nicolas-desktop> <20120103131346.GC2410@nicolas-desktop> <20120103143120.GF2410@nicolas-desktop> <20120103221555.22c778a3@digimed.co.uk> <4F038C23.5030708@gmail.com> Date: Thu, 5 Jan 2012 16:07:04 +0700 Message-ID: Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Beta test Gentoo with mdev instead of udev; version 3 From: Pandu Poluan To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - svr-us4.tirtonadi.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - lists.gentoo.org X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [47 12] / [47 12] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - poluan.info X-Archives-Salt: 1e4355f2-c794-4c09-9006-26887bede6a4 X-Archives-Hash: 2238afe04b0c0c44d1bb5d456989f6fc On Thu, Jan 5, 2012 at 03:21, Canek Pel=C3=A1ez Vald=C3=A9s wrote: > On Wed, Jan 4, 2012 at 6:35 AM, Pandu Poluan wrote: >> ----- >8 snip >> >> You were there in the thread linked by Walt, udev is just one of several >> packages maintained by RH people that *demands* /usr to be mounted durin= g >> boot. >> >> And the RH devels insistence to deprecate /bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin... >> >> I'm getting depressed. One battle might be won (mdev vs udev), but there= 's >> still a war against the RH braindeadness... > > I'm sorry to tell you this, but (as admirable as it could be), the > mdev hack to use it instead of udev is not a "victory". We are not at > war, in the first place; and in the second place, the mdev hack would > be used by a handful of guys bent on refusing a change that, like it > or not, would in the end come. Like Gentoo on FreeBSD, it would be a > nice hack, maybe even worthy of applause, but in the end irrelevant: a > toy. A cute, entertaining (and, in a few cases, useful) toy. But a toy > nonetheless. > I may have been slightly hyperbolic in my usage of "battle" and "war", but then again why must Gentoo bend over to the wills of RH developers who insist on doing things their way? And mdev might be a 'toy' to you, but embedded Linux developers will vehemently disagree with you. And based on the responses in this thread, server guys will also disagree with you. For these two groups, mdev is not a toy but a necessity. > The heavy development will continue to happen in udev, and the devices > that will dominate in the future (touchscreens, bluetooth input and > audio devices, hardware that has a highly dynamic change rate) will > only be supported by udev. The mdev hack will be useful maybe to only > some guys, and even then udev would be able to do the same (and more). > The ability of mdev is more than enough for those handling the back-end servers, thank you. udev just adds bells and whistles *not* needed in server environs. > The use of an initramfs (or, alternatively, having /usr in the same > partition as /), and maybe the move of /bin to /usr/bin and /lib to > /usr/lib will be made, and in the future most of the interesting > software will simply assume that this is how a system works. Maybe we > will even stop to use the ridiculous short directory names from the > stone age, and we will start using sensible names: > > /usr -> /System > /etc -> /Config > /var -> /Variable > I can agree with sensible names. Unfortunately, forcing sensible names upon servers *already* in the field is a sure fire recipe to disaster. Besides, the FHS itself explains the reasoning behind each directory. As to the forced use of initramfs, again it runs counter to the wishes of embedded Linux people (for whom storage is at a premium) and the wishes of server people (whom would prefer as few 'breaking points' as possible). (As a side note, initramfs introduces not one, but *MANY* additional breaking points: the tool used to generate the initramfs might be buggy and/or feature-incomplete, the initramfs itself might encounter an unrecoverable error, the pivot_root or chroot might snag upon some not-so-edge cases, etc.) > I feel a deep respect for the people working on making mdev a > "replacement" of udev; it is not an easy task (even if it only works > for a really small subset of the use cases udev covers), and something > that I certainly would never do. But their hack (as beautiful as it > may be) will never be used by the majority of Linux users, and > probably not even by the majority of Gentoo users (if my > interpretation of the discussion on gentoo-dev is correct). And with > the pass of time it will be harder and harder to keep the hack working > with new hardware, new software, and new use cases. > > But, hey, this is FOSS; you guys go nuts hacking in whatever feature > (or anti-feature) you like. As in the case of this mdev hack, it may > even be included in the Gentoo ebuilds. Just don't expect it to be > supported forever, don't expect it to support general-purpose setups, > and certainly don't call it "a victory". It's just the same history as > always: the people writing the code are the ones calling the shots. > As long as there are embedded Linux, mdev *will* be maintained and supported in perpetuum. Besides, the so-called mdev "hack" is really just a small script which gets executed before "init" runs. The other convoluted steps waltdnes had provided is just necessary to fix the virtual/dev-manager ebuild to allow using mdev instead of udev (and, with the acceptance of his bug report, we will soon see in the main portage tree). The actual steps to replace udev with mdev are very simple. Rgds, --=20 FdS Pandu E Poluan ~ IT Optimizer ~ =C2=A0=E2=80=A2 LOPSA Member #15248 =C2=A0=E2=80=A2 Blog : http://pepoluan.tumblr.com =C2=A0=E2=80=A2 Linked-In : http://id.linkedin.com/in/pepoluan