Re: PATCH: cdrecord: avoiding scsi device numbering for ide devices

H. Peter Anvin
2004-08-06T22:49:03Z

Followup to: <20040806175937.GA296@ucw.cz>
By author: Vojtech Pavlik <vojtech@suse.cz>
In newsgroup: linux.dev.kernel
> >
> > If you do not fix this, you just verify that Linux does not like it's users.
> > Linux users like to call cdrecord -scanbus and they like to see _all_ SCSI
> > devices from a single call to cdrecord. The fact that the Linux kernel does not
> > return instance numbers for /dev/hd* SCSI devices makes it impossible to
> > implement a unique address space :-(
>
> I'm a long time Linux and cdrecord user, and I must say I always hated
> the -scanbus thingy. It's so much easier to just pass the /dev/hdc
> device node, where I _know_ my CD burner lives than to have to figure
> out what fake SCSI address cdrecord has made up and requires me to pass
> to it, even when I have just a single CD burner in my system.
>

Indeed. To a first order it doesn't matter if the default system
namespace is crappy -- applications inventing its own namespaces
(usually inconsistently) means that it's IMPOSSIBLE to make all
applications do the same thing - which is actually more important to
make them all do "the right thing." Furthermore, it blocks
improvements such as udev.

Note there is nothing that says cdrecord -scanbus can't print out
a list, using the system device names.

-hpa