Re: devfs compatibility

Richard Gooch (Richard.Gooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU)
Tue, 4 Aug 1998 18:11:15 +1000

Albert D. Cahalan writes:
>
> I know you will hate this, but better now than later...
>
> UnixWare 7 has 5-part device names with a c0b0t0d0p0 format.
> It is just like the new Linux ones, except for the fourth letter.
>
> Values of p are:
>
> 0 whole disk
> 1 first PC partition
> 2 second PC partition
> 3 third PC partition
> 4 fourth PC partition
>
> Although SCO stops there, notice how much their system is like the
> new Linux system. It would be great to eliminate the inconsistency
> while we still can.

We went through this at the beginning of the year. IIRC the format
you suggest was considered, but rejected for some reasons I don't
fully recall just now. One of those reasons is that 'd' implies a
disc, which is wrong: that field (whether we call it 'd' or 'u')
addresses a LUN. You can have multiple discs per LUN. I think the plan
was to have
c0b0t0u0d0 for disc 0 on LUN 0
c0b0t0u0d1 for disc 1 on LUN 0
p? for partition ? on a disc

when you had a LUN with multiple discs. If you have only one disc, you
just get: c0b0t0u0

Also, there are now too many people using it for these kinds of
changes to be "painless".
SCO will just have to change their system: we have the bigger market
share ;-)

Regards,

Richard....

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