Re: Migrating to larger numbers
H. Peter Anvin (hpa@transmeta.com)
Sun, 06 Jun 1999 00:27:43 -0700
Rogier Wolff wrote:
>
> H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> > Guest section DW wrote:
> > >
> > > > And so how do you distinguish between (0,2000) and (7,208)?
> > >
> > > I do not.
> > >
> > > (But (0,2000) is not normalized and hence would not normally occur.)
> > >
> >
> > "Normalized"? We need to support more than 255 anonymous devices. I
> > believe your basic idea is good, but the only possible escape number is
> > ~0, not 0.
>
> Peter,
>
> Hmmm. If I get this correctly, my kernel draws a new number from
> it's hat when I mount /proc or an NFS mount?
>
> Well, from the isofs specification, we can conclude that it is highly
> frowned upon to use major 0 for anything. We might consider moving
> THAT. On the other hand, the major 0 thingy is completely inside the
> kernel, so that it would never be handed to the conversion routine
> anyway.
>
That's a good point, actually. I don't know how much in the kernel
would break if we moved unnamed devices away from 0. Perhaps we should
leave 0:0 as the null device and use another major for the anonymous
devices.
-hpa
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