Re: Larger dev_t

H. Peter Anvin
2001-03-28T00:13:54Z

Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2001, Alan Cox wrote:
> >
> > A major for 'disk' generically makes total sense. Classing raid controllers
> > as 'scsi' isnt neccessarily accurate. A major for 'serial ports' would also
> > solve a lot of misery
>
> Exactly. It's just that for historical reasons, I think the major for
> "disk" should be either the old IDE or SCSI one, which just can show more
> devices. That way old installers etc work without having to suddenly start
> knowing about /dev/disk0.
>
> But hey, maybe I'm wrong.
>

They would still have to change, since now we'd have to worry about
/dev/hd* having changed meanings; also, you now cannot create a
backward-compatible /dev since /dev/hdc is (22,0), etc, in the current
scheme. The SCSI scheme is also not acceptable; it has been a
long-standing problem that it doesn't allow enough partitions per disk.

-hpa

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