Re: lots and lots of disks again

Andries Brouwer
2004-02-17T14:50:08Z

On Mon, Feb 16, 2004 at 07:56:10PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> On Mon, 2004-02-16 at 17:57, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> > I am not quite sure what you mean.
> > In my opinion we must continue supporting the old 16-bit space
> > for a long time to come. But can of course do what we want in
> > the new space.
>
> The problem is that we cannot have /dev/sda1 at both (8,1) and (1049, 1)
> or whatever new major is chosen.

True. In my opinion it must stay at (8,1).

> We also need to flip the switch entirely one way or the other for
> increased partition numbers since a mixed scheme would be asking for an
> admin nightmare.

Why would that be?

Suppose /dev/sdAA is (1049,0) and has 256 partitions.
And /dev/sda is (8,0) and has 16 partitions.
Where is the nightmare?

> > It is not either or, but both.
> > Old devices must not change number.
>
> I don't understand this. The user does not know devices by number but
> by device node name (which is chosen by the OS vendor who populated
> /dev/ now, or by udev in future). I agree the node name should not
> change, but don't see any reason why the major/minor might not.

That is (i) because people do not change device nodes when they boot
a new kernel, and (ii) because the knowledge is built-in into a
nontrivial number of programs.

Andries