Re: [PATCH] block: Revert "[SCSI] genhd: add a new attribute "alias" in gendisk"

Jeff Garzik
2011-11-10T21:21:49Z

On 11/09/2011 11:25 AM, Tejun Heo wrote:
> This reverts commit a72c5e5eb738033938ab30d6a634b74d1d060f10.
>
> The commit introduced alias for block devices which is intended to be
> used during logging although actual usage hasn't been committed yet.
> This approach adds very limited benefit (raw log might be easier to
> follow) which can be trivially implemented in userland but has a lot
> of problems.
>
> It is much worse than netif renames because it doesn't rename the
> actual device but just adds conveninence name which isn't used
> universally or enforced. Everything internal including device lookup
> and sysfs still uses the internal name and nothing prevents two
> devices from using conflicting alias - ie. sda can have sdb as its
> alias.
>
> This has been nacked by people working on device driver core, block
> layer and kernel-userland interface and shouldn't have been
> upstreamed. Revert it.
>
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/1155104
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.scsi/68632
> http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.scsi/69776
>
> Signed-off-by: Tejun Heo<tj@kernel.org>
> Cc: Jens Axboe<axboe@kernel.dk>
> Cc: "James E.J. Bottomley"<James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>
> Cc: Nao Nishijima<nao.nishijima.xt@hitachi.com>
> Cc: Kay Sievers<kay.sievers@vrfy.org>
> Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman<gregkh@suse.de>
> Cc: Alan Cox<alan@linux.intel.com>
> Cc: Al Viro<viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>

Acked-by: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@redhat.com>