Re: DEVFS_FS

From: Adam J. Richter (adam_at_yggdrasil.com)
Date: 11/11/04

  • Next message: K.R. Foley: "Re: [patch] Real-Time Preemption, -RT-2.6.10-rc1-mm3-V0.7.23"
    Date:	Thu, 11 Nov 2004 12:24:10 -0800
    To: gene.haskett@verizon.net
    
    

    On 2004-11-11 0:06:37, Gene Heskett wrote:
    >On Wednesday 10 November 2004 16:03, Alexandre Costa wrote:
    >>On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 15:46:06 -0500 (EST), linux-os
    >>
    >><linux-os@chaos.analogic.com> wrote:
    >>> What is the approved substitute for DEVFS_FS that is marked
    >>> obsolete?
    >>
    >>udev
    >>http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/kernel/hotplug/udev.html
    >
    >Humm, I'm not sure I'm entirely happy with that choice. I have an
    >FC3RC5 install on an old P-II running at 233mhz, and the udev start
    >in the bootup is the slowest single thing to get started by an order
    >of magnitude.
    >
    >Can someone tell me a good reason udev wastes as much time as the post
    >does checking 383 megs of memory, which is very nearly a minute even
    >just for udev?
    >
    >If its to be used, its got to speed itself up, a LOT!.

    Gene,

            I do not know what kind of device you are using or what kind
    of inialization it really needs, but your situation _might_ be a good
    example of the benefits of being able configure devices on demand with
    devfs if this is a device that you do not use every time you boot
    your system and that initialization process is not something that
    can easily be deferred to the first device open() call.

            As you may know, in the recent releases of my devfs rewrite,
    I split the demand loading for missing device files into a separate
    a separate facility (tmpfs "lookup traps"). That way, even if you
    do not want to run the rest of devfs, you could avoid that
    initilization and perhaps some kernel memory usage from the device
    driver in the sessions that never use that device.

            On the other hand, initialization on demand would make your
    first access of the session to that device spend the same amount of
    time that you are now spending at boot, whereas, you might instead
    want to have that device driver loaded at boot time and stay in
    kernel memory so that you can do the initialization in the background
    if you can somehow ensure that access to the device will block until
    the initialization completes if necessary.

                        __ ______________
    Adam J. Richter \ /
    adam@yggdrasil.com | g g d r a s i l
    -
    To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
    the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
    More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
    Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/


  • Next message: K.R. Foley: "Re: [patch] Real-Time Preemption, -RT-2.6.10-rc1-mm3-V0.7.23"

    Relevant Pages

    • Re: Couple of things re FC4 & yum
      ... >> This machine is a bit odd in that its actual boot partition isn't ... >> even mounted by FC4. ... for FC4 because one of these days I'm going to install FC4 here, ... message by Gene Heskett are: ...
      (Fedora)
    • Re: [patch] Real-Time Preemption, -RT-2.6.10-rc2-mm2-V0.7.32-2
      ... >Gene Heskett wrote: ... with a low level of disk activity, as if its doing a slow e2fsck with ... which I knew for a fact was a good boot file. ... send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in ...
      (Linux-Kernel)
    • Re: realtime preempt 2.6.10-rc3-mm1-V0.33-0
      ... >Gene Heskett wrote: ... >> I just bought a Chaintech Gforce 5200 and cannot find the driver ... I was rather pleasantly surprised to see my BDI install boot to ... send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in ...
      (Linux-Kernel)
    • Re: Couple of things re FC4 & yum
      ... >>What would this do to the grub choice of boots menu? ... >in the MBR or Boot Sector. ... the way back to sanity would be an 'fdisk -mbr /dev/hdb'? ... message by Gene Heskett are: ...
      (Fedora)