Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 9 Oct 1999 02:20:25 -0400 (EDT) | From | Stephen Frost <> | Subject | Re: [linux-usb] Re: USB device allocation |
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On Fri, 8 Oct 1999, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > RJ> The Unix-like kernel knows only major/minor device numbers, not names. > > > Which POSIX standard says how unix-like kernel acts inside ??? > > > > I'm beginning to wonder why we're still fumbling around with the > > major/minor concept. Is there any compelling reason for it other than > > "thats the way we've always done it since 1970's, and 640k is enough ram > > for anyone"? > > You need a permanent on disk device key for the system. That basically means > either a name or number in the inode. A number is obviously somewhat easier. > > major/minor is a very clean and neat idea - we might want 32bits of it sure
Welp folks, there you have it. Okay, so what work needs to be done to change over to 32bits for major/minor? Is that going to be enough? Is there a way to get information from a driver via it's major/minor? Perhaps a user-space proggie that could scan through the major/minor's for the scsi devices and get information about each device and use that information to either create links to the broken /dev/sd*, or to just out-right create the devices to begin with? What about hot-swap w/ scsi devices? If you add in a disk between two other disks, what's going to happen? Can we have a list of major/minor's currently in the system and a way to get information about them, and perhaps a way to be notified (in userspace) when a new device is added or removed?
Stephen
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