cowloop technology

[Peter Schuller]

> For me GEOM, and devfs are not clear but huge wins of FreeBSD-(5,6)
> over FreeBSD-4. I could not care less if that costs a little
> performance when it works so beautifully. Not only encrypting modules
> but also GEOM raid management modules work perfectly, as far as i have
> seen. They are both simple to use and adequately documented. And having a
> /dev which reflects the hardware actually present is a great bonus.

I have to agree. From a strictly user/admin standpoint it's
*EXTREMELY* nice. I especially like the way GEOM actually presents to
the user what is actually happening; there is no impedance mismatch
between the implementation and the abstraction presented to the
user. Being able to combine any different GEOMs arbitrarily (as long
as cycles are not created) is exactly what one has always wanted.

However I agree that things like exlusive ownership of devices is
extremely annoying.

I also agree about /dev. IIRC the website stated (still states?) that
a devfs style solution is not preferred for DragonFly. Does this mean
one should not expect DragonFly to get a dynamically populated /dev,
or does it just mean it will be implemented differently? I find a
dynamically populated /dev to be extremely useful, and as a matter of
principle I never did like the concept of having a bunch of special
files on a physical fs that may or may not correspond to an actual
device.

-- 
/ Peter Schuller, InfiDyne Technologies HB

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