Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 27 Jan 2000 09:00:59 -0500 (EST) | From | Alexander Viro <> | Subject | Re: [RFC] change in /proc/devices |
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On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, david parsons wrote:
> > Argh... I'ld _really_ like to get rid of major/minor stuff wherever > > possible. Besides, says who that we will not get a driver for terabyte > > hardware raid where one can expect more than 256 partitions? > > Nothing. That's the advantage of separating out the major and > minor numbers -- if you explicitly list the major and minor > numbers, userland apps don't have to know how wide a major is > to do something with it.
Erm... Flat address space is Good Thing(tm). Very small part of userland needs to know about the major size.
> 0300[40] means that I have to know that a major is the first 8 bits.
No, you don't. mknod(2) takes dev_t as an argument. Just feed the thing as is and don't bother with the splitting it up. stat(2) also returns plain dev_t, so...
> > In lkm you will be able to do much better - another question being what > > would you do with the results... > > Need you ask? If I wrote a lkm, I'd have it export this > information as a filesystem so I could mount it on /dev like G-d > himself intended, and then I could maybe wedge a 2.4 kernel > onto a Mastodon boot floppy [*].
Urgh... Then you will be better off patching register_disk().
> david parsons \bi/ [* Anybody know of a good way to trim 300k from a > \/ 2.3.x zImage? ]
I don't promise 300k - core of each driver will remain as-is, but glue is going to shrink. As soon as I'll sort the IDE stuff out[1] I'll submit the next patch to Linus. And it looks like it will be the last one _adding_ code - from there on it's a big butchery.
BTW, I suspect that you might win quite a few blocks if you will modify insmod and teach it to load gziped modules. Or just use cramfs...
[1] bloody thing works, but I'ld like to know what (if anything) stops it from breaking apart...
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