Re: LANANA: To Pending Device Number Registrants

Mark H. Wood
2001-05-17T18:40:19Z

At the risk of offending hundreds, I'll mention that dynamic naming of
disks and tapes has worked very well for many years in VMS. When you e.g.
mount a disk volume labelled FOO, the system creates a system logical name
DISK$FOO: for it automagically. Users don't care that it's really
$4$DUA7: (which is *really* disk#5 on one HSCxx controller and disk#2 on
another one). When you open DISK$FOO:[some.where]some.file , the kernel
knows what you meant.

Substitute ephemeral device special files for the system logical names and
you've got something like what's being discussed here.

Mind you, when that AI-thingy, I forget the name, suspects an impending
failure and wants to send me mail about it, *it* needs some way to tell me
which physical device needs replacing, so that I don't remove the wrong
one. So physical locations have value, but only in special circumstances.
Ordinary end-use and daily system administration shouldn't employ them.

--
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer mwood@IUPUI.Edu
Make a good day.