From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Greg KH Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:14:20 +0000 Subject: Re: [PATCH 1/2] SCSI: Add a SCSI option for persistent device names Message-Id: <20110408161420.GB12111@kroah.com> List-Id: References: <20110405124946.7969.66796.stgit@ltc233.sdl.hitachi.co.jp> <20110405161400.GA885@kroah.com> <4D9F17DF.5030601@hitachi.com> <4D9F1CD1.2020600@suse.de> <1302275652.4090.10.camel@mulgrave.site> In-Reply-To: <1302275652.4090.10.camel@mulgrave.site> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: James Bottomley Cc: Hannes Reinecke , Nao Nishijima , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org, linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org, Kay Sievers , Jon Masters , 2nddept-manager@sdl.hitachi.co.jp On Fri, Apr 08, 2011 at 08:14:12AM -0700, James Bottomley wrote: > So, while I agree totally with the above: udev and userspace is the way > to go, I'm not totally opposed to having a non-invasive mechanism for > indicating a user's preferred name for a device. I think there are a > couple of ways to do this: > > 1. Entirely in userspace: just have udev consult a preferred name > file and create say /dev/disk/by-preferred. Then have all the > tools that normally output device information do the same (i.e. > since real name to preferred name is 1:1, they could all do a > reverse lookup). > 2. have a writeable sysfs preferred_name field, either in the > generic device or just in SCSI. The preferred name would be > used by outbound only (i.e. kernel dev_printk messages and > possibly /proc/partitions). All inbound uses of the device > would come via the standard udev mechanisms > (i.e. /dev/disk/by-preferred would be the usual symlink). This > means from the kernel point of view, no renaming has happened. > We'd just try to print out the preferred name in certain > circumstances, which should solve most of the described problem. Either, or both, of those options are fine with me as well. thanks, greg k-h