From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with archive (Exim 4.33) id 1CKagW-0000FT-2y for mharc-grub-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Oct 2004 07:00:44 -0400 Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1CKagT-0000D0-D3 for grub-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Oct 2004 07:00:41 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.33) id 1CKagR-0000CB-V0 for grub-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Oct 2004 07:00:40 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.33) id 1CKagR-0000Bh-IE for grub-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Oct 2004 07:00:39 -0400 Received: from [212.43.237.68] (helo=kotoba.storever.com) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.34) id 1CKaYc-00047B-Ua for grub-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 21 Oct 2004 06:52:35 -0400 Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by kotoba.storever.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 02F40F6A9C5B for ; Thu, 21 Oct 2004 12:52:31 +0200 (CEST) From: "Yoshinori K. Okuji" Organization: enbug.org To: The development of GRUB 2 Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 12:53:10 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.6.1 References: <1098283465.417679c90a494@webmail.han.nl> In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Disposition: inline Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <200410211253.10450.okuji@enbug.org> Subject: Re: device syntax X-BeenThere: grub-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: The development of GRUB 2 List-Id: The development of GRUB 2 List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Thu, 21 Oct 2004 11:00:41 -0000 I prefer consistency among various architectures. Note that PC BIOS does not offer any name for drives. They are represented by numbers. "hd" and "fd" are aliases for numbers. If we assume that the user knows her firmware very well, we don't need to provide "hd" or "fd", since the user should be able to specify numbers. Actually, specifying drives by numbers is supported by GRUB legacy, but nobody uses it, simply because it is not intuitive. IMO, we should not assume that the user knows technical details. If we write an installer for Open Firmware-based machines, the user may not know anything about Open Firmware. The best thing for the user is that the user does not have to learn many things. If we provide a consistent interface, the user needs to study the single thing. Nothing else. I think the important goal for GRUB is to provide an easy way for ordinary users and a complicated but still useful features for experts. So I propose always using simple aliases for drives. If you want to use a device name provided by your firmware explicitly, you could use this kind of syntax: devalias foo "/pci@FF500000/isa@6/ide@i1f0/disk@0,0" multiboot (foo,0)/boot/kernel EFI uses more horrible device names. This is quoted from EFI How To Guide: Acpi(PNP0A03,1)/PCI(0|0)/Scsi(Pun0,Lun0)/HD(Part1,Sig1B16CC00-ABD0-0) If we use escape chacters, it becomes too unreadable. Okuji