blkmtd and name_to_dev_t

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Hello all,

I'm trying to revamp the Linux kernel by moving a lot of (mainly) 
initialization code to "early userspace" -- a tiny userspace carried 
with the kernel image.  This is sometimes referred to as the "klibc" 
project.

I sent a git tree to Andrew Morton for possible integration in -mm, and 
it got rejected due to the fact that the blkmtd driver uses 
name_to_dev_t() when compiled into the kernel, which is removed in the 
klibc tree -- it is now strictly a matter of userspace policy.

I talked to Jörg Engel about this; he indicated that the blkmtd driver 
(which is the one that has this problem) is already deprecated in favour 
of block2mtd.  Hence I'm hesitant to spend a lot of time on this, 
especially in the light of the fact that keeping a 90,000-line patch up 
to date with an evolving kernel is a challenge in itself.

There seems to be a few options, in order from least work to more work:

- Removing the blkmtd driver and tell people to use block2mtd;
- Have kinit intercept blkmtd configuration options and emulate them 
using block2mtd;
- Adjust blkmtd to have a configuration interface, and then make kinit 
configure it.

I would appreciate any opinions on this.  Clearly, I'm eager at getting 
unblocked on this, but my submitting a tree to Andrew which disables a 
driver without the maintainers' OK isn't exactly going to fly :)

For what it's worth, the klibc tree is at:

git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/hpa/linux-2.6-klibc.git

	-=hpa