From owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Apr 9 19:43:15 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: hackers@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BB26B16A403 for ; Sun, 9 Apr 2006 19:43:15 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from babkin@verizon.net) Received: from vms040pub.verizon.net (vms040pub.verizon.net [206.46.252.40]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EE8243D46 for ; Sun, 9 Apr 2006 19:43:15 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from babkin@verizon.net) Received: from vms070.mailsrvcs.net ([192.168.1.3]) by vms040.mailsrvcs.net (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-4.02 (built Sep 9 2005)) with ESMTPA id <0IXH003W60425PG0@vms040.mailsrvcs.net> for hackers@freebsd.org; Sun, 09 Apr 2006 14:43:14 -0500 (CDT) Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2006 14:43:14 -0500 (CDT) From: Sergey Babkin To: Mike Meyer , Scott Long Message-id: <9399827.1657341144611794358.JavaMail.root@vms070.mailsrvcs.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit X-Mailman-Approved-At: Sun, 09 Apr 2006 20:19:20 +0000 Cc: Ceri Davies , hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Re: Using any network interface whatsoever X-BeenThere: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: babkin@users.sf.net List-Id: Technical Discussions relating to FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 09 Apr 2006 19:43:15 -0000 >From: Mike Meyer >In <443811EF.2020509@samsco.org>, Scott Long typed: >> Youre' saying that >> instead of /dev/da0, we should have >> /dev/HITACHI-HUS103073FL3800-SA19-B0T1L0 > >That's a ridiculous extreme. All I advocated was that we be able to >easily identify the devices connected to the system, *not* that we be >able identify every device in the world. Sun solved disk device naming >back in the 80s. I think this is a problem consisting of multiple parts: 1. Identify physical devices and be able to access them. 2. Identify some stable "logical" names by device type, that stay fixed when the configuration changes. 3. Be able to find the mapping easily between these two. 4. Be able to change that mapping. USB is probably the subsystem that has a particular need in this kind of stuff. So, since we have devfs nowadays, why don't we just have multiple names (dev files) for the same device? For example, the same device can be named by driver aha0b0t0d0 and by logical type disk0. The 3rd part can be solved by using symlinks in devfs: i.e. disk0 would be a symlink to aha0b0t0d0, and you can do "ls" and find out what is linked to what. The 4th part can be solved by allowing the sysadmin to create symlinks in devfs. The network driver subsystem would obviously have to be changed to consult devfs for the device names. The next interesting question is how to keep these links persistent between boots. -SB