Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 14 May 2001 22:17:35 -0700 (PDT) | From | Linus Torvalds <> | Subject | Re: LANANA: Getting out of hand? |
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On Mon, 14 May 2001, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > How hard is it to generate a new "disk driver framework", and let people > register themselves, kind of like the "misc" drivers do. Except we'd only > allow DISKS. You could add something like > > register_disk_driver("compaq-ciss", nr_disks, &my_queue);
Note: one _important_ part of this is that absolutely _nobody_ registers a disk driver except for a controller that is physically found on the machine.
None of this stupid "we have numbers pre-allocated for hardware that does not even exists on this machine" crap that the current setup is full of.
This way, you can pretty much depend on the fact that in any "normal" configuration, you'll find disks at "disk0", "disk1", ... completely regardless of whether the machine has a IDE controller, a "old-fashioned SCSI" controller, or a Compaq smart-raid controller. And THAT is useful. You can migrate filesystem setups from one machine to another, without worrying about the fact that one machine has IDE disks and another has SCSI disks - the filesystem will just work, and the kernels will just boot.
THAT is how it is supposed to work.
For people who care about where the disks are (0.01% of all people, and half of those are misguded anyway), you can have a /proc interface or an ioctl or something.
But don't make excuses for the current setup. And understand why we must NOT continue to just give out major numbers indiscriminately.
[ Oh, and _please_ don't Cc: me on this discussion. I'm not that interested. I know what I want, and I've let the current mess go on for too long. If it takes some pain to fix it, then so be it. It needs to be fixed, even if people suddenly start thinking that the light of my a** dimmed a bit. That's ok. I just don't want to really fill my inbox - I read the kernel mailing list with a newsreader and the "D" key. ]
Linus
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