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Date:      Tue, 4 Feb 2003 17:52:35 -0500 (EST)
From:      Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org>
To:        phk@freebsd.org
Cc:        arch@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: length of device names.
Message-ID:  <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1030204175153.20508o-100000@fledge.watson.org>
In-Reply-To: <19572.1044358190@critter.freebsd.dk>

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Sounds reasonable to me.  I just wanted longer device names, I didn't want
unlimited ones. :-)

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert@fledge.watson.org      Network Associates Laboratories

On Tue, 4 Feb 2003 phk@freebsd.org wrote:

> 
> There are some irritating implications of making device names truly
> variable size, and I am not yet comfortable making the semantic
> changes it causes, people calle makedev() and make_dev() from the
> damnest places.
> 
> In fact, I am not even convinced doing the work would have a positive
> payoff in the end compared to sticking with KISS and just taking
> the memory hit for a longer default buffer.
> 
> I decided to increase the limit to 63 characters for now, and revisit
> the issue if this limit ever becomes a problem.  I personally expect
> and hope that any device name approaching than 63 characters would
> hit against other (esthetical) boundaries first.
> 
> We currently allocate 50 dev_t's at compile time (to be able to
> make it until malloc(9) works) and the rest with malloc(9).  The
> current size of a dev_t is 140 bytes + space for the name, so in
> theory we can allow for 116 bytes long names at a net cost of only
> 50 times the increase since malloc(9) already allocates us 256 bytes
> buckets, so the net cost of this change was 2400 bytes.
> 
> Summary: I'm shelving the unlimited name length for now, hoping that
> 63 or subsequently 116 will be enough to cater for our needs.
> 
> Poul-Henning
> 
> 
> In message <200302041107.h14B7ST1060100@repoman.freebsd.org>, Poul-Henning Kamp
>  writes:
> >phk         2003/02/04 03:07:28 PST
> >
> >  Modified files:
> >    sys/sys              param.h 
> >  Log:
> >  Increase the allowed length of device names to 63 characters.
> >  
> >  This is a band-aid while I fret over how much breakage removing the
> >  restriction entirely will result in.
> >  
> >  Please note that this is still a limit for the entire pathname
> >  relative to the mountpoint of devfs, so the length of "/dev/fd/3"
> >  is 4 characters.
> >  
> >  Revision  Changes    Path
> >  1.142     +1 -1      src/sys/sys/param.h
> >
> 
> -- 
> Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
> phk@FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
> FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
> Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
> 
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