From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Greg KH Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH 0/4] Persistent device name using alias name Date: Fri, 8 Jul 2011 12:58:56 -0700 Message-ID: <20110708195856.GA14592@kroah.com> References: <20110708084547.2091.55262.stgit@ltc197.sdl.hitachi.co.jp> <20110708194501.GU6418@nb.net.home> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20110708194501.GU6418@nb.net.home> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Karel Zak Cc: Nao Nishijima , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org, James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com, kay.sievers@vrfy.org, jcm@redhat.com, dle-develop@lists.sourceforge.net, Masami Hiramatsu , yrl.pp-manager.tt@hitachi.com, dgilbert@interlog.com, stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de, hare@suse.de List-Id: linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org On Fri, Jul 08, 2011 at 09:45:01PM +0200, Karel Zak wrote: > On Fri, Jul 08, 2011 at 05:45:47PM +0900, Nao Nishijima wrote: > > This patch series provides an "alias name" of the disk into kernel and procfs > > messages. The user can assign a preferred name to an alias name of the device. > > > > Based on previous discussion (*), I changed patches as follows > > - This is "alias name" > > - An "alias name" is stored in gendisk struct > > - Add document to Documentation/ABI/testing/sysfs-block > > - When the user changes an "alias name", kernel notifies udev > > > > (*) http://marc.info/?l=linux-scsi&m=130812625531219&w=2 > > > > [...] > > > [localhost]# cat /proc/partitions > > major minor #blocks name > > > > 8 0 12582912 foo > > 8 1 12582878 foo1 > > 8 0 8388608 sdb > > 8 1 512000 sdb1 > > 8 2 7875584 sdb2 > > If there is not /dev/foo and /sys/block/foo then the patch introduces > a REGRESSION. > > The names from /proc/partitions are used in many applications > (libblkid, fdisk, ...) for many many years. The applications will not > work as expected. > > It's crazy to assume that all the applications will be improved to > translate the "pretty name" from /proc/partitions by /sys/block/:. > > Note, it's pretty naive to expect that people will use the pretty > names for printk()/dmesg only. I'm absolutely sure that it's will be > expected (by end-users) in /etc/fstab, mount, df, fdisk, ... > > It's will be necessary to modify all these utils. And it would be even easier, to just modify the utilities in the first place to handle the symlink names in /dev/disk that are there today, and leave the kernel alone. With the above information you provided, I don't see how we can accept this patch at all as it will break existing userspace utilities which is not allowed. thanks, greg k-h