From owner-freebsd-arch Wed Oct 6 5: 0: 7 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Received: from ns1.yes.no (ns1.yes.no [195.204.136.10]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B88711527F for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 05:00:00 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from eivind@bitbox.follo.net) Received: from bitbox.follo.net (bitbox.follo.net [195.204.143.218]) by ns1.yes.no (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id NAA17028 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:59:45 +0200 (CEST) Received: (from eivind@localhost) by bitbox.follo.net (8.8.8/8.8.6) id NAA24921 for freebsd-arch@freebsd.org; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 13:59:44 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from peach.ocn.ne.jp (peach.ocn.ne.jp [210.145.254.87]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7BC7715130 for ; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 04:59:27 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from dcs@newsguy.com) Received: from newsguy.com (p20-dn03kiryunisiki.gunma.ocn.ne.jp [210.232.224.149]) by peach.ocn.ne.jp (8.9.1a/OCN) with ESMTP id UAA02976; Wed, 6 Oct 1999 20:57:55 +0900 (JST) Message-ID: <37FB29E3.94672E74@newsguy.com> Date: Wed, 06 Oct 1999 19:52:19 +0900 From: "Daniel C. Sobral" X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.6 [en] (Win98; I) X-Accept-Language: en,pt-BR,ja MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Simon Shapiro as Himself Cc: arch@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Minor Device numbers References: <37FA70B9.B5DBA345@simon-shapiro.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Simon Shapiro as Himself wrote: > > I am open to any polite suggestion, but my inclination > is to recommend 32bit major devices where the lower > 8 bits do exactly what they do today, and the upper > 24 are as per driver. The problem with that is that > the major number is stuck in the middle of the minor. > Actually was the upper byte on the PDP-11 :-). > To solve that one would need either separate arguments, > or turn dev_t to a 64bit integer. Well, I'd like devfs people to correct me if I'm incorrect, but... It is my impression that devfs solves your problem, to a certain extent. As devices get their numbers as they come and go, there is no need to reserve ranges to specific devices. I wouldn't mind someone taking this opportunity to explain exactly how devfs deals with this. :-) Now, the main point of this message... the solution to all of dev's problem is devfs (axiom). As a result, nobody is going to help with work-arounds to your problem, since the correct solution is devfs. Or, in other words, until devfs comes along, you are not getting a solution to your problem. :-( Furthermore, I'm not sure devfs/slice can get into the tree before RELENG_4 comes along, and that would delay it, and anything depending on it, until 5.0-RELEASE! Frankly, that's a scenario I'd rather avoid. I think we'll be seriously impaired if we delay devfs further. -- Daniel C. Sobral (8-DCS) dcs@newsguy.com dcs@freebsd.org "I always feel generous when I'm in the inner circle of a conspiracy to subvert the world order and, with a small group of allies, just defeated an alien invasion. Maybe I should value myself a little more?" To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-arch" in the body of the message