Linux-kernel mailing list archive 1998-31,: Re: DEVFSv50 and /dev/fb? (or /dev/fb/? ???)

# Re: DEVFSv50 and /dev/fb? (or /dev/fb/? ???)

Anthony Barbachan (barbacha@trill.cis.fordham.edu)
Thu, 6 Aug 1998 23:42:51 -0400

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>> I do not know about it similarity to other UNIX's (other than SUN/SCO)
but
>> /dev/sda is definately simple. As far a company goes they are not going
to
>> care if their drive is named /dev/sda or /dev/dsk/sd/c0t0d0u0 (whatever).
>
> Except that it is MUCH easier to find a physical disk if you know the
>controller and target id of it.

True but this could also be done with /dev/c0t0l0 (c = controller, t =
target, l = LUN) And I was mainly arguing against the previous writer's
insistance that having equally cryptic names will help Linux compete in
business.

>> will make a difference is in the user who is used to
A:,B:,C:,COM1,LPT1,etc.
>> This type of person would be more likely to curse not praise the
verbosely
>> complex names that devfs "perfers" to use. I agree that SCSI definately
>> needs a change to support large numbers of controllers and disks but most
>> other devices EIDE,floppies,serial ports, etc do not and changing their
>> current simple device names only (after the only device names are
removed,
>> which they will if devfs is added) breaks backward compatibility and adds
to
>> the complexity of a Linux system. BTW, devfs is not consistant, at least
>> not to Solaris and perhaps (I do not remember) not to Unixware either.
>
> Except that from what I understand it doesn't break backwards

It sort of does as if this is implemented then the old naming sceme will
probably be "depricated".

>compatibility at all. EIDE I agree works okay the way it is w/ /dev/hda,
>but that's mainly because it's consistent and the /dev/hda access point
>doesn't change if you add or remove disks, it's directly associated w/
>controller 0, master drive. Floppy drives are /dev/fd0, closer in my view
>to devfs already than /dev/sda is.
>
> Another issue, what happenes when a drive doesn't respond to
>SCSI probes? Happens all too often to me, and figuring out which drive
>died would be MUCH harder to do w/ /dev/sda than w/ /dev/c0t0d0s0, not
>impossible, but would certainly take a whole lot more time.

It would probably take a second to do

dmesg | grep sda and read off the information

or

grep sda /var/adm/syslog and read off the information

>
> Stephen
>

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- Next message: Richard Gooch: "Re: DEVFSv50 and /dev/fb? (or /dev/fb/? ???)"
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