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| author | Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com> | 2008-04-21 19:51:07 +0200 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de> | 2008-07-22 06:54:40 +0200 |
| commit | e105b8bfc769b0545b6f0f395179d1e43cbee822 (patch) | |
| tree | 23a1f0839547829c4ca6e89cd40adf285eb9feb6 /Documentation/filesystems | |
| parent | Merge git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/usb-2.6 (diff) | |
| download | linux-e105b8bfc769b0545b6f0f395179d1e43cbee822.tar.xz linux-e105b8bfc769b0545b6f0f395179d1e43cbee822.zip | |
sysfs: add /sys/dev/{char,block} to lookup sysfs path by major:minor
Why?:
There are occasions where userspace would like to access sysfs
attributes for a device but it may not know how sysfs has named the
device or the path. For example what is the sysfs path for
/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3160827AS_5MT004CK? With this change a call to
stat(2) returns the major:minor then userspace can see that
/sys/dev/block/8:32 links to /sys/block/sdc.
What are the alternatives?:
1/ Add an ioctl to return the path: Doable, but sysfs is meant to reduce
the need to proliferate ioctl interfaces into the kernel, so this
seems counter productive.
2/ Use udev to create these symlinks: Also doable, but it adds a
udev dependency to utilities that might be running in a limited
environment like an initramfs.
3/ Do a full-tree search of sysfs.
[kay.sievers@vrfy.org: fix duplicate registrations]
[kay.sievers@vrfy.org: cleanup suggestions]
Cc: Neil Brown <neilb@suse.de>
Cc: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
Acked-by: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org>
Reviewed-by: SL Baur <steve@xemacs.org>
Acked-by: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@vrfy.org>
Acked-by: Mark Lord <lkml@rtr.ca>
Acked-by: H. Peter Anvin <hpa@zytor.com>
Signed-off-by: Dan Williams <dan.j.williams@intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt | 6 |
1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt index 7f27b8f840d0..9e9c348275a9 100644 --- a/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/sysfs.txt @@ -248,6 +248,7 @@ The top level sysfs directory looks like: block/ bus/ class/ +dev/ devices/ firmware/ net/ @@ -274,6 +275,11 @@ fs/ contains a directory for some filesystems. Currently each filesystem wanting to export attributes must create its own hierarchy below fs/ (see ./fuse.txt for an example). +dev/ contains two directories char/ and block/. Inside these two +directories there are symlinks named <major>:<minor>. These symlinks +point to the sysfs directory for the given device. /sys/dev provides a +quick way to lookup the sysfs interface for a device from the result of +a stat(2) operation. More information can driver-model specific features can be found in Documentation/driver-model/. |