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Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 12:36:18 +0100 (CET)
From: Roman Zippel <zippel@linux-m68k.org>
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To: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl
cc: greg@kroah.com, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
       <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: 64-bit kdev_t - just for playing
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Hi,

On Fri, 28 Mar 2003 Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl wrote:

> Roman, Your questions are misguided.

Thanks for your trust. :-(

> A larger dev_t is infrastructure.
> A sand road that is turned into an asphalt road.
> 
> Nobody has to use this improved infrastructure.
> But many uses are conceivable.

The size of dev_t doesn't matter at all, what matters is how this number 
is managed and used. The kernel has somehow to generate a number for a 
device and tell the user about it, so that he can use it to access the 
device. This requires infrastructure and the actual size of this number is 
only a small detail in the whole picture. I want to know how the whole 
picture looks like, so could you please stop talking bullshit and answer 
my questions?

> I can imagine that there will be people wanting
> to take part of the available space for a universal
> hash of disk serial number or partition label or
> I don't know what, so that devices are addressable
> by content instead of path.

This won't happen, dev_t is the wrong place to encode such information.

bye, Roman

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