Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265869AbUAEECh (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 23:02:37 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265874AbUAEECh (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 23:02:37 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:57485 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265869AbUAEECf (ORCPT ); Sun, 4 Jan 2004 23:02:35 -0500 Date: Sun, 4 Jan 2004 20:02:20 -0800 (PST) From: Linus Torvalds To: viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk cc: Daniel Jacobowitz , Andries Brouwer , Rob Love , rob@landley.net, Pascal Schmidt , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Greg KH Subject: Re: udev and devfs - The final word In-Reply-To: <20040105035037.GD4176@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> Message-ID: References: <20040104000840.A3625@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104034934.A3669@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104142111.A11279@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040104230104.A11439@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20040105030737.GA29964@nevyn.them.org> <20040105035037.GD4176@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2206 Lines: 48 On Mon, 5 Jan 2004 viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote: > > What is _not_ OK, though, is to have folks suddenly see /dev/hda3 changing > its device number - then we would break existing setups that worked all > along; even if admin can fix the breakage, it's not a good thing to do. Ehh, it will actually happen. If nothing else, things like SATA will end up meaning that the device you were used to seeign as /dev/hdc will suddenly show up as /dev/scd0 instead. Just because you changed the cabling while you upgraded to a newer version of your CD-ROM drive. And the thing is, with fs labels and udev, even "existing systems" really shouldn't much care. Now, we'd probably not want to force the switch, but I do suspect we'll have exactly this as a switch in the "Kernel Debugging Config" section. Where even _common_ things like disks could end up with per-bootup values. Just to verify that every part of the system ends up having it right. Think of it this way: RedHat not that long ago decided to break with a _lot_ of tradition by switching over to UTF-8 as the common text encoring. It broke some _major_ programs in how they dealt with "simple" things like keyboard input that had worked for literally _decades_. And you could switch it off if you really wanted to, but quite frankly, it wasn't even a simple choice in the install. You had to know what you were doing to switch it off. And the thing is, that is _the_ single thing that cleaned up a lot of remaining problems wrt UTF-8 on Linux. Yes, almost all of them had been solved already, or RH wouldn't have dared do the switch. But to get there all the way, you had to literally force the cut-over. (Yeah, I'm a bad person, and I personally went back to the C locale, because "pine" still doesn't get UTF-8 right, and nobody is apparently ever going to fix it. Oh, well. But at least I know I'm doing something _wrong_, which in itself is a good thing.). Linus - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/