Device layering work patch #1

[esmith]

Matthew Dillon wrote:
    This patch is of 'alpha' quality, I expect to commit it (with further
    work) in about a week.  I would appreciate testing so I can be confident
    that I'm not going to blow up the system when I commit this stage,
    but nobody should install this alpha patch on a production machine.
People might not mind if these risky patches are directly committed and 
let the chips fall where they may, since there hasn't been an official 
release yet. The pre-release state of this project should implicitly let 
everyone know this software is always potentially unstable and we should 
use it at our own risk. If someone wants to use software that is safe 
and reliable they can use something that has an official, stable 
release. A warning message on the kernel list could be sufficient notice 
of particularly risky updates.