Devfs isn't the problem. You can do it as well (if not better) via the
existing userspace program.
What we really need are longer device numbers in all file systems, esp.
ext2 of course. Everything else is (more or less) taken care of -- glibc
already has large device numbers, a new kernel stat() system call version
is easy to do, ditto for extending the kernel's idea of dev_t; all the old
code should work OK as long as you don't need devices with minor>255.
The real compatibility problem is stuff like "check if /path/to/a and
/path/too/to/b point to the same file" -- suppose you want to copy one to
the other, a is on 08/01 and b is on 08/101 (i.e. SCSI disk #17), and both
have inode 56...
-- No experiment is ever a complete failure, inasmuch as a well-written account of it can serve admirably as a bad example.-- Matthias Urlichs \ noris network GmbH / Xlink-POP Nürnberg Schleiermacherstraße 12 \ Linux+Internet / EMail: urlichs@noris.de 90491 Nürnberg (Germany) \ Consulting+Programming+Networking+etc'ing PGP: 1024/4F578875 1B 89 E2 1C 43 EA 80 44 15 D2 29 CF C6 C7 E0 DE Click <A HREF="http://info.noris.de/~smurf/finger">here</A>. 42