1) Reworking the disk subsystem, so that there is a single top-level
driver for all disks, with the lower level drivers (IDE and SCSI)
registering each valid disk (maybe each parition) with the top
level driver. With this scheme, we can go with a single major
device number for the disk subsystem with each partition with
it's own minor number. This means we can get rid of the /dev/hd*
and /dev/sd*, and replace them with a single set of devices (/dev/disk*?).
Another "feature" I can forsee this providing is something like a
/proc/disktab, which could list all of the disks in the system and
track stats on a by-disk or by-parition basis.
2) As above, but for CD-ROMS. We can get rid of all of the /dev/ entries
for all of those odd-ball CDROMs, and replace it with a single /dev/cdrom*
series. I think distribution creators who do CD installs would really
love it if /dev/cdrom0 (real device, no symlink) were always a real
CDROM if one was present. That way, they don't have to mount every
device under the sun (or under /dev, anyway :) looking for a vaild
file system.
Also, I'd like to see the tray locking on CDROMS be a little less
strict. If there are no open files on a mounted CD, and no process
has the CD for a current directory, I'd like to be able to open
the CD tray (without a screwdriver :), put in a new disk, and
have it be available when I close the tray.
I'm not sure how that scheme would handle audio CD's. My first
guess is that an audio cd could be mounted like a CDROM, but no files
would show up at the mount point. If you then put a CDROM in it's place,
it's contents would show up where you mounted the audio cd.
3) (this goes with #1)
I'd like to be able to name partitions. For example if I have /usr
on my 2nd SCSI hard disk, and I add a disk to the system, I'm thinking
it would be nice if I could tag the /usr parition with a name (say "USR")
and then be able to symbolically mount that partition, no matter where
it may have ended up after the disk insertion (or removal). Like:
"mount -t ext2 -sym USR /usr", which would search for a parition
named "USR" and mount it.
I'm not sure where in the kernel this would fall, perhaps it's a
filesystem modification.
Well, that's my wishlist for now. I'm curious to know what others think.
Are these reasonable ideas? I've been working so much lately I'm not sure
I can tell anymore. :)
Russ
-- +-------------------------------------------------------+ | Russ Steffen | | EMail: rsteffen@ia.net | +-------------------------------------------------------+