Re: Symlink, chrdev, blkdev translators

[Ludovic Courtès]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2002 at 07:37:02PM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> Let me counter with a question:  Where do you expect device nodes, fifos and
> symlinks to come from if not from translator settings?
> [snip]
> This is similar for other special files, like character and block devices. 
> But we don't use those special files at all, so we don't have support for
> them (that explains why there is no /hurd/chrdev and /hurd/blkdev).  Maybe
> at some time we will.

Actually, what makes a file "look like" a symlink or a character/block device
is just its st_mode field in struct stat. So why do we need a special case
that will make these kind of files "look like translators" for filesystems
that support them natively -- beside the fact that it's conceptually
equivalent?

> > However, it seems that a fifo translator was started (how?)
> Although a fifo is short-circuited by the filesystem, it will be set, reported
> and treated like a real translator.

But it seems that the fs on which it was started isn't aware of it: this fs is
doesn't allow to set translators on it. So "who" knows that a fifo translator
is running there?

> It seems the fifo translator doesn't implement the go away RPC properly. 
> Quite some of the translators don't do this, another example is pfinet.  It
> would be nice if you could fix that ;)

Sure! :)

Thanks for your explanations!

Cheers,
Ludovic.