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

Miquel van Smoorenburg
2003-07-17T11:32:05Z

In article <20030717131955.D2302@pclin040.win.tue.nl>,
Andries Brouwer <aebr@win.tue.nl> wrote:
>On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 10:46:35AM +0000, Miquel van Smoorenburg wrote:
>
>> The filesystem driver itself must convert from native rdev to linux 32:32.
>
>Look at the mknod utility.
>The user types major,minor.
>The system call uses dev_t.
>This means that user space needs to be able to combine
>major,minor into a dev_t.

Ah, I see. That is a different issue - converting the 32-bit dev_t
from userspace into a 32:32 internal representation.

But, a utility like mknod currently only knows about 8:8 anyway.
It needs to be patched to know about >8:>8 ... why not add
64bit (32:32) dev_t syscalls at the same time ?

I mean, if the 64 bit dev_t is not going to be exposed to userspace,
why bother with it in the kernel ? And if it /is/ going to be
exposed to userspace, why bother with a 32 bit encoding ?

Mike.