Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Tue, 9 Jul 1996 00:48:08 -0400 | From | "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <> | Subject | Re: SCSI device numbering (was: Re: Ideas for v2.1) |
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Date: Thu, 4 Jul 1996 12:24:17 -0700 (PDT) From: Michael Nelson <mikenel@netcom.com>
Why don't we use the DCE UUID mechanism that already exists?
I thought about it; however, DCE UUID's are much more complicated (although they are more extensible). At the cost of the extensibility, though, they are a real pain to generate. This is a problem, because I had originally intended for the kernel to gen a UUID and fill it into the superblock if the UUID field as blank. However, it would be much more complicated to do this with a DCE-style UUID.
Ultimately, it might be useful to put a DCE-style UUID generator in the kernel, since some applications require a *large* number of UUID's, and the DCE UUID really assumes that a central UUID authority per network node is handing out UUID's.
However, for the ext2 superblock mechanism, these concerns don't arise, since we won't be making new ext2 filesystems all the time --- but by the same token, there's no reason to use the complicated DCE-style UUID in the superblock, either, since there's no question of on-the-wire conflict. So, we're probably much better off sticking with something simple.
- Ted
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