Re: Symlink, chrdev, blkdev translators

[Marcus Brinkmann]

On Mon, Aug 19, 2002 at 10:52:54PM +0200, Marcus Brinkmann wrote:
> > 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?
> 
> So you are saying that showtrans should not give us anything on special
> nodes?  What advantage does it give you to be inconsistent on purpose?

Let me answer this another way: You are looking at this from the Unix
perspective, not the Hurd perspective.  In the Hurd, those file nodes are
not special in any way, they are just translators.  That the translators are
not set by allocating a block and writing "/hurd/fifo" into it and setting a
passive translator flag in the inode, but by setting a special flag that
says "unix fifo" in the inode, is of no concern whatsoever to the Hurd.

In fact, once you access that node, you are talking to the fifo translator
which will lie and report the fifo flag in its response to io_stat.  So it
is completely transparent to the user.  Except for symlink, for which you
don't get a process of its own.

Thanks,
Marcus

-- 
`Rhubarb is no Egyptian god.' GNU      http://www.gnu.org    marcus@gnu.org
Marcus Brinkmann              The Hurd http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/
Marcus.Brinkmann@ruhr-uni-bochum.de
http://www.marcus-brinkmann.de/