Re: [RFT] #2 Support for ~2144 SCSI discs

Alan Cox
2001-08-02T16:38:11Z

> That said, in 2.5 I want to see us move away from using device numbers
> as the fundamental device handle and move to device instance
> structures. That's a lot cleaner, and BTW is devfs-neutral
> (i.e. doesn't need devfs to work). Exposing a 32 bit dev_t to
> user-space is acceptable, but internally it should be shunned.

You need it internally otherwise you are screwed the moment you have 65536
volumes mounted - because you run out of unique device identifiers for stat.

Fortunately 32bit dev_t (not kdev_t .. which I think is what you are talking
about and will I assume go pointer to struct) is only one syscall change