[Linux-disciples] Recognizing a new NIC

[Stephen R Laniel]

On Tue, May 17, 2005 at 10:55:33PM -0400, Adam Rosi-Kessel wrote:
> Um, maybe something about block devices?  Ethernet is not a block device?

Isn't that why there are character devices? My understanding
is that block devices are those which can be buffered (like
hard disks) and character devices are those which can't
(like mice or keyboards). Some network apps (ftp, say) will
be able to handle buffering; others (like ssh) won't. So the
best policy is to make the device node a character device,
and let applications decide how they'll layer buffering
above the device layer.

Such, at least, is my intuition.

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
steve at laniels.org
+(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/
PGP key: http://laniels.org/slaniel.key
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