Date: Fri, 01 Oct 1999 13:33:58 -0700 From: bmah@CA.Sandia.GOV (Bruce A. Mah) To: jin@george.lbl.gov Cc: bmah@california.sandia.gov, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee Subject: Re: SCSI disk naming problem Message-ID: <199910012033.NAA81193@nimitz.ca.sandia.gov> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 01 Oct 1999 11:33:46 PDT." <199910011833.LAA20871@george.lbl.gov>
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--==_Exmh_-853294958P Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii If memory serves me right, jin@george.lbl.gov wrote: > bmah@CA.Sandia.GOV wrote: > > If memory serves me right, jin@george.lbl.gov wrote: > > > > See LINT on details of how to wire down scsi devices... > > > > > > > > Your proposal doesn't take adding a second scsi card into account. > > > > > > Well, I did not mean that has to be da0, da1, etc., but similar thing > > > like dac0t0d0, dac0t1d0, ... dac3t4d0, etc. which is much clear what > > > disk is. > > > A few people does not like this one because the name is long, and it > > > is like some commerical configuration. They said that this is Free > > > software. > > > > That's an interesting argument on the part of a few people. The > > commercial UNIX I first adminned had wired down, short names for disks > > (rz0, rz1, rz2, ... ). This was very nice. > > This one does not resolve the controller problem either as > narvi@haldjas.folklore.ee said. > > So, I guess dac0t0, dac0t1, ... dac3t4, will be good enough if we want > to be short, but anything shorter than this will be meaningless. Well...I personally prefer the short names. On systems with multiple controllers, the commercial UNIX I used (Ultrix) just continued its numbering with rz0, rz1, rz2, ..., rz6, rz7, rz8, ... FreeBSD lets you do exactly the same thing. Having long device names is confusing to users who only have one disk controller (and I'd bet this is the vast majority). It took me a long time to grok the syntax of Solaris device names and I still get confused about this. Commercial or free doesn't have anything to do with this issue...this scheme would force users to remember and type extra characters that many of them don't need. (/dev/da0s1a is long enough, but /dev/dac0t0d0s1a is a little ridiculous for someone that has only one controller and one drive.) > I guess you missed the point that I do want to wire down the name. > This is the original debate. But, I do not want to wire down the > name by hand. The system should be able to take care this simple > thing. As you mentioned, digit UNIX does it, Solaris does it, why > not FreeBSD? No, I was agreeing with you that wiring down names is good. (I did miss a message or two in the middle of your discussion, apparently, and that may have contributed to my apparently confusion.) But I think your proposed long names are confusing, and I claim that that rebuilding a kernel to get wired-down device names is easy. Perhaps I am misunderstanding what you mean when you say "by hand". I'm envisioning an environment where you have a lot of similarly-configured machines. So you build a kernel (based on GENERIC) to wire down devices ONE TIME, and distribute that kernel out to all the different machines. > Because it is FreeWare so we cannot do some thing good > as commercial UNIXs do? I don't understand this argument. "Free" (i.e. open source) vs. commercial doesn't have anything to do with this issue. Cheers, Bruce. --==_Exmh_-853294958P Content-Type: application/pgp-signature -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGPfreeware 5.0i for non-commercial use MessageID: XLuZVhwPyj0B/Y81yQVEKvp0xbeOI6It iQA/AwUBN/UattjKMXFboFLDEQLa1ACeN1vOjgtY0XgxpbhQYz/ih0qNfT8AnRoE IXhhuQFcWdm7QcJnhAL+Lu60 =XfH0 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --==_Exmh_-853294958P-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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