Re: UUIDs (and devfs and major/minor numbers)

Dan Hollis (goemon@sasami.anime.net)
Fri, 18 Jun 1999 17:49:43 -0700 (PDT)

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On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Theodore Y. Ts'o wrote:
> Actually, I'm not convinced that major/minor numbers are the problem.
> Right now we have our choice between statically allocated major/minor
> numbers, which admittedly can be a problem because you have to deal with
> a central registry (although I don't that problem is *that* bad yet!),
> or purely dynamic major numbers which have the problem that it's hard to
> create the devices with the correct major number. (Althoguh this
> problem can be solved; I dealt with it in the Comtrol Rocketport
> driver's rc.d script, before I got a statically allocated major number.)

The current major/minor allocations are becoming a mess. There are holes,
and some legacy overlaps in allocations. There are also some arbitrary
limits on number of devices eg serial that are caused by maj/min
allocation. There might be plans to move to 8:24 or 16:16 but still doesnt
solve the problem of central registry and general messiness. In fact it
may make it worse 8)

And it looks like /dev/ptyp0 moved from 4:128 to 2:0 - what happens if you
boot a new kernel on an old fs with ancient maj/min allocations? Does the
kernel bitch or does it blow up 8)

-Dan

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