From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@athena.mit.edu> Subject: The Linux Device List Date: 1 May 1993 18:33:58 -0400
From: iiitac@swan.pyr (Alan Cox)
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 1993 10:00:31 GMT
>In article <1993Apr26.214957.18819@klaava.Helsinki.FI> Rick Miller <rick@ee.uwm.edu> writes:
> 1.) TTY NAMING CHANGES! Final standard: {tty|cua}<card><port>
> I've caved in under the weight of reason, and am now listing
> the serial lines by *card* and *port* (rather than just by
> number from 0 to 63). Please, now that there's a reasonable
> standard, let's try to phase out the old "ttys0" and "ttyS0"
> names and start using "tty00"/"cua00" instead.
>
Oh no , how daft can we get.....
I sent mail to Rick Miller soon after his announcement went out ---
apparently he assumed it was something I (as the serial driver
maintainer) wanted, since at boot up, it prints /dev/tty[0-9][0-9].
In fact, this was a change Linus had made a while back, when there was
still contraversy regarding whether the serial devices should be named
/dev/ttysXX or /dev/ttySXX. I guess he didn't want the kernel playing
favorites over this particular issue.
In any case, renaming the serial devices to /dev/ttyXX from /dev/ttySXX
is a really bad idea, because of all sorts of reasons that have already
been mentioned on c.o.l. My mail to Rick went through all of these
reasons, and a reply that same day basically said "Oh, I thought *you*
wanted these changes.... oh well, we can change things back." This was
a couple of days ago, and I'm surprised that he hasn't said anything
publically (at least not that I've seen as of yesterday).
SO, what people should do is basically disregard his postings at least
vis-a-vis the serial port naming ---- from my discussions with him, my
understanding of what will be in the next Linux Device Registry List
will be: /dev/cuaXX for the callout devices, and /dev/ttySXX for the
serial devices.
- Ted
P.S. I'm officially on vacation right now, and I just happened to
download to my laptop a bunch of c.o.l. digests that I was behind on
before I left. So, if you send me mail, don't expect a response very
quickly, as I don't have a reliable internet access in California, and I
will certainly not have reliable internet access once I'm in Hong Kong.
I do have an email address which will hopefully reach me, and which I
will check every couple of days while I'm in H.K. That address has
been given to a number of the more prominent Linux developers, and it
is intended for truely important things, since it's going to cost me
money in order to use it. (Example of something important: If you
know how to get me free access to the Internet from H.K. :-)
Otherwise, send mail to my normal email address (tytso@mit.edu) and I
will read it when I get back.