Re: [PATCH] print_dev_t for 2.6.0-test1-mm

Andries Brouwer
2003-07-17T22:56:29Z

On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 03:43:08PM -0700, Joel Becker wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 18, 2003 at 12:24:51AM +0200, Andries Brouwer wrote:
> > Premise: some filesystems or archives store 32 bits.
> > Conclusion: we must be able to handle that.
> > This is unrelated to the kernel, unrelated to system calls,
> > it is related to <sys/sysmacros.h>.
>
> How does linux handle that today? IIRC, it ignores the high
> 16bits and treats that 32bit number as 8:8. That is what happens today,
> for every filesystem, whether it stores 32 or 16 bits.
> Why expand that? We can continue to treat 32bit numbers (eg,
> from NFSv2) as 16bit numbers.

:-) A surprising question.
Why expand that?
Because we would like to use more than 16 bits in device numbers.