Re: [PATCH] new system call mknod64

[Christoph Hellwig]

On Mon, Apr 21, 2003 at 11:01:21AM -0700, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> Oh, the split has huge meaning inside the kernel. We split the number 
> every time we open the device, and use that split to look up the result.

Not anymore for blockdevices.  And now that Al's back not anymore soon
for charater devices, too :)

Really, it's a bad idea to introduce this arbitrary split now that
the major/minor split is basically gone inkernel after lots of hard
work.