Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sun, 18 Jan 1998 09:31:51 +0100 (MET) | From | Gerard Roudier <> | Subject | Re: devfs |
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On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Richard Gooch wrote:
> linux kernel account writes: > > On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Richard Gooch wrote: > > > > [snip] > > > > You're forgetting that someone researched this and reported that "s" and "d" > > > > originally stood for "device" and "subdevice", which is more general than > > > > partitions or slices and not inherently wrong for fdisk. That's the definition > > > > I adopted, not "slice". I still think that /dev/sd/c0b0t0d0 is a reasonable > > > > choice for a whole disk and /dev/sd/c0b0t0d0s1 etc for PC style partitions. If > > > > we need to incorporate further subdivisions for slices, we can easily extend > > > > this to /dev/sd/c0b0t0d0s1.2 to refer to slice 2 within PC partition 1. I > > > > think we should retain the convention of referring to logical partitions as > > > > subdevices 5..N for compatibility with present Linux systems. > > > > > > It does seem inconsistent to have letters delimiting all the other > > > parameters except the slices. If you can come up with a different > > > letter for "slice" which doesn't sound too contrived, I'd prefer > > > that. Right now 's' could be either "subdevice" or "slice". One could > > > use 'l' for discLabel, but that looks too much like '1'. > > > > Nope, it's a decmil number!!! > > OK, but my point still holds: why not use decimal notation for the > whole thing? I.e.: c0b1t2d3s4.5 becomes: 0.1.2.3.4.5 > The reason is simple: I hate it so I won't implement it. Arguments > sent to Linus ;-)
Just my 0.02 FF. ;-)
In my opinion, both are quite ununderstable for most end-users. The 2nd one has just the advantage to be human readable. Too much Unixifying Linux is not the right way, IMO, to make it user-friendly. Gnu is Not Unix and Linux Is Not UniXish. ;)
> So, given the whole name isn't in decimal notation, why should the > partition/slice section use decimal notation?
A '.' is a punctuation. French decimal notation uses ',' instead.
Speaking of SCSI, which is reported to be too complex for end-users, most SCSI systems uses only 1 BUS and most devices have only 1 logical unit. So, something like '/dev/sd/t0d1s0' or '/dev/0,1,2' is probably the typical complexity that most users are probably expecting.
When 'general' means _complex_ for users, better not to be general, IMO.
I miss this thread due to lack of time. Sorry if the problem of end-user understandability has already been debated and solved.
Regards, Gerard.
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