From owner-freebsd-fs@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Feb 25 23:38:39 2013 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:1900:2254:206a::19:1]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A940D2DD for ; Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:38:39 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from rfg@tristatelogic.com) Received: from outgoing.tristatelogic.com (segfault.tristatelogic.com [69.62.255.118]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 73474EDB for ; Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:38:34 +0000 (UTC) Received: from segfault-nmh-helo.tristatelogic.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by segfault.tristatelogic.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id CEA633B59D; Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:38:17 -0800 (PST) From: "Ronald F. Guilmette" To: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org Subject: Hard drive device names... Serial Numbers? Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 15:38:17 -0800 Message-ID: <10096.1361835497@server1.tristatelogic.com> Cc: Jeremy Chadwick X-BeenThere: freebsd-fs@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Filesystems List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:38:39 -0000 Firstly, I want to apologize to Jeremy Chadwick, and also to anyone else who, either recently or in the past, has been kind enough to try contact me (to send me something non-spamish) and who has been tripped up by my ham-fisted local spam filtering. Believe me, it isn't personal, and I regret that you had trouble reaching me. I could go on at great length about my personal philosophy regarding spam, and spam filtering, but this is neither the time nor the place. Still, I feel compelled to say just a few words on this topic now. For now I'll just briefly say that unlike 99.999% of all Internet users, I personally have never come around to the belief that the existance of spam is inevitable. Rather, I believe that 100% of it is due to either incompetence or greed on the part of the folks responsible for overseeing the machines at the IP addresses from which it emanates, with incompetence being responsible for the majority of it. In the case of spam coming out of the likes of Comcast and other "public access" Internet Service Providers that are neither knowingly or willingly supporting spam however, I am of the belief... not widely shared... that they could put a stop to virtually 100% of the spam coming out of their networks simply by requiring all local senders to authenticate and by limiting per-day outbound mail flow on a per-account basis to something modest (e.g. 100 messages) except in special cases (and by special request on the part of the user in question). But very few ISPs do this, because they are, by and large, too cheap/greedy to be willing to spend the money to implement and support any such simple and effective system for curtailing their own outbound spam flow. Comcast is no exception to this general rule. As a result, I have previously locally blocked all Comcast sub-domains that have spammed me in the past, specifically: mn.comcast.net ny.comcast.net in.comcast.net fl.comcast.net ma.comcast.net co.comcast.net de.comcast.net ga.comcast.net va.comcast.net mi.comcast.net tx.comcast.net wa.comcast.net ut.comcast.net pa.comcast.net nj.comcast.net md.comcast.net sc.comcast.net ms.comcast.net or.comcast.net tn.comcast.net al.comcast.net ct.comcast.net la.comcast.net dc.comcast.net ar.comcast.net nh.comcast.net ks.comcast.net wv.comcast.net nm.comcast.net vt.comcast.net But I had made a special exception for ca.comcast.net, because I needed to do so in order to be able to receive e-mail from one California-resident relative. Unfortunately, it appears that Comcast recently snafued my special California exception by changing their DNS naming scheme so that now, mail coming out of their California mail servers arrives from nodes within the ca.mail.comcast.net subdomain, rather than nodes within the mail.ca.comcast.net domain, as previously. Predictably, and shortly thereafter, I got spammed from a node within the ca.mail.comcast.net subdomain, thus causing that domain to end up in the local blacklist. (And that in turn caused e-mail from both Jeremy and my California relative to start bouncing.) I thank Jeremy for his ernest offer to put me in touch with "people on the Comcast side" and I do accept that offer, but I feel sure that despite any amount of haranguing and/or cajoling I might subject any such contacts to, Comcast corporate, like so many other ISPs, has long ago made the irrevocable decision NOT to do what it takes to stop their network from leaking massive amounts of spam on a daily basis, because to do otherwise might subtract some paltry number of bucks from the corporate bottom line. "Our problems are manmade, therefore, they can be solved by man." -- John Fitzgerald Kennedy My apologies to all for the lengthy off-topic digression. Jeremy, I've readjusted my local blacklists now, so you should be able to e-mail me direct. Back on topic... I've tried to plow through the references Jeremy gave regading the "wired down" capability of CAM(4). I think that I may sort-of understand it. It does appear to be _a_ solution. I'm not yet 100% persuaded that it is the _best_ solution, and the idea of using serial numbers (or WWN numbers) is still appealing, at least to me. But I'm not going to advocate for that, mostly because I don't feel that I fully understand this "wired down" stuff yet. I need to look into that more before I say anything else. At least I come away with the the satisfaction of knowing that (a) I am indeed not the first person to have either thought of or suggested using drive serial numbers and also (b) that this idea _has_ already been well and truly discussed, apparently by and among better minds than mine. Regards, rfg P.S. I confess that I've only skimmed the material on the "wired down" capability of CAM(4). Perhaps the answer to this question is burried in there someplace, but I'd just like to ask: What are the rules, if any regarding what I can rename a given controller channel to within the /boot/loader.conf file? Could I rename one to, for example /dev/foobar707 if I wanted to? If not, then what are the rules?