Re: extended partitions (fwd)
Marty Leisner (leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com)
Wed, 11 Oct 1995 10:46:48 PDT
> Forwarded message:
>
> > /dev exists to support a mapping between device names (eg, hda1) and
> > major/minor number pairs (eg, (3,1).)
>
> > If the names in /dev are generated directly by the kernel, like /proc
> > is, this problem disappears.
>
> The existance of /dev as a real, rather than a virtual file system allows
> device permissions to be set, and remain set across reboots. I must admit
> that I think the idea of a virtual /dev does have an attractive eligance,
> however, I have never seen any proposal which would fix the device
> permission problem.
>
> Jim
Well, the way of doing /dev/hdan is too cumbersome for users/fdisk once
you also start understanding BSD slices and extended partitions...
Maybe instead of starting with /dev/hda5 we use much great minor numbers
(i.e. starting with 20 indicates extended partitions, 40 starts the
first bsd disk slice...
I'd be more than willing to see a tree like
/dev/hda/
raw
primary/[1-4]
extended/[1-10]
bsd/[1-10]
Instead of having everything in /dev
--
marty
leisner@sdsp.mc.xerox.com
Member of the League for Programming Freedom