Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2000 12:41:13 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com> To: "Justin T. Gibbs" <gibbs@plutotech.com> Cc: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How much do we need the all-singing, all-dancing devfs? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.10007251230040.56819-100000@beppo.feral.com> In-Reply-To: <200007251927.NAA48018@pluto.plutotech.com>
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On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Justin T. Gibbs wrote: > > > >But there is a fully qualified 128 bit WWN. It's type 6, and it's in page 0x83 > >of VPD info for Inquiry in SPC2. > > But not all devices are SCSI and not all SCSI devices have WWNs, so > calling the FreeBSD representation of a virtual device identifier > a WWN will lead to confusion when the identifier doesn't come from > a WWN. The CAM3 spec talks a bit about virtual device identifiers > and leaves it up to the implementer to decide what data is appropriate > to make it unique. Oh- I see what you mean. Let me reiterate or try to make clear what I was saying before: I'm not trying to make a completely generic solution here. I'm trying to get something that isn't *too* egregious that will solve problems right now with respect to shuffling attachments of SCSI and Fibre Channel disks. Something that can ship in the next release. Thus I was not trying to solve the virtual ID problem as a generic. This is also why the semantics in fstab have that ugly OSF/1 style look of, e.g.: wwn@0x21000000abcdef01,0 /space ufs rw 1 2 vpdsn@"LF10234 Seagate",0 /space1 ufs rw 1 2 which makes the identifier being used unambiguous (whether folks get confused even with this is a separate issue...!). The correct, long term solution, like the Solaris "all-singing, all-dancing" devfs, may take years to be correctly designed and agreed to before it comes out (it already has). With incredible respect for all the people involved in that, I have to say I (and FreeBSD) needs something *now*. This is always a balancing act. Linux probably leans too close to the 'now'- which is why they have to do major system rewrites every 6-9 months. NetBSD leans far too close to the "get it complete 'right' first!' end- which has it's own problems. I'm hoping that FreeBSD can fit between these extremes. -matt P.S.: for bonus points, who out there who knows where I've worked and what evil I've foisted on the world (he gleefully rubs his hands) can identify a similar naming scheme to the one proposed above and where it currently is quite contentedl being used (well, being used) by (literally) thousands of NT, Solaris, IRIX, SunOS, and AIX users (might be a few more platforms by now)? -mat To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message
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