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From: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Large machines and tty naming conventions.
Message-ID: <940@bsu-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 8-Aug-87 10:50:49 EDT
Article-I.D.: bsu-cs.940
Posted: Sat Aug  8 10:50:49 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Aug-87 11:39:44 EDT
References: <8550@brl-adm.ARPA> <6200@brl-smoke.ARPA> <382@altos86.UUCP>
Reply-To: dhesi@bsu-cs.UUCP (Rahul Dhesi)
Organization: CS Dept, Ball St U, Muncie, Indiana
Lines: 22

In article <382@altos86.UUCP> scott@altos86.UUCP (Scott A. Rotondo) writes:
[talking about putting devices in subdirectories under /dev for speed]
>>
>>This is one of my favorite ideas.  However, it does impact code such as "ps"
>>that "knew" the old scheme.
>
>Just make the new 
>directories contain links to the regular /dev entries.

There's a trap here that I have fallen into when using UUCP and related
programs both under Microport System V/AT (Release 2 equivalent) and
under 4.3BSD.  In some cases a lock file is created whose name is based
on the name of the device being used.  If the device has multiple
names, you may find that the lock file is created by one name, but when
the program exits, it tries to remove the lock file by another name and
fails.  

I suspect this happens because some programs use ttyname(3) to find the
name of their controlling terminal, and also use the device name
obtained from L.sys, at different times.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo}!{iuvax,pur-ee}!bsu-cs!dhesi