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Date: Mon, 26 Jun 2006 10:38:28 +0200
From: Paul Schenkeveld <fb-arch@psconsult.nl>
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Subject: Re: Accessing disks via their serial numbers.
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On Mon, Jun 26, 2006 at 10:00:38AM +0200, Pawel Jakub Dawidek wrote:
> I don't really care how we will make it visible for the user. This could
> be devd(8) using some tool (diskinfo(8)?) to fetch serial number and
> create a symlink to newly attached disk, but we need to have a general
> mechanism inside the kernel for getting such informations.

And make mounting /tmp, /var, /usr and so on depending on a running devd?
Do we need /usr/bin/sed or /usr/bin/awk to mangle the output of diskinfo?

I agree with Poul-Henning about the namespace pollution but I've been
fighting the devicename shift when changing the hardware configuration
so often that I also like the idea of something I could really rely on.

<OT>
Same issue with fxp0 and fxp1 on the motherboard becoming fxp1 and fxp2
when inserting another fxp card.  Some things are just a bit too dynamic
sometimes, but that's another discussion.
</OT>

I don't want to change the way the world is and certainly not violate POLA
but just to add another angle to the discussion, life would be nice if
we had something like:

  /dev/ad/0
  /dev/ad/0/whole_disk
  /dev/ad/0/s1
  /dev/ad/0/s1a
  /dev/ad/0/s1c

and

  /dev/ad/<SERIAL> -> 0

$.02

Regards,

Paul Schenkeveld