Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261217AbUKEV7r (ORCPT ); Fri, 5 Nov 2004 16:59:47 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261225AbUKEV7r (ORCPT ); Fri, 5 Nov 2004 16:59:47 -0500 Received: from h151_115.u.wavenet.pl ([217.79.151.115]:15263 "EHLO alpha.polcom.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261217AbUKEV7n (ORCPT ); Fri, 5 Nov 2004 16:59:43 -0500 Date: Fri, 5 Nov 2004 22:59:35 +0100 (CET) From: Grzegorz Kulewski To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Chris Wedgwood , Andries Brouwer , Adam Heath , Christoph Hellwig , Timothy Miller , Linux Kernel Mailing List Subject: Re: support of older compilers In-Reply-To: Message-ID: References: <20041103233029.GA16982@taniwha.stupidest.org> <20041105014146.GA7397@pclin040.win.tue.nl> <20041105195045.GA16766@taniwha.stupidest.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1575 Lines: 40 > The kernel does do more these days than it did in '95. But 6 times more? I > dunno.. Can't we remove ramfs for a good start? Everyone should use tmpfs instead and some stupid distributions (I will not tell their names) try to mount ramfs on /dev (udev) and that leads to very stupid panic if you will write for example: dd if=/dev/evms/sda5 of=/dev/sda17 bs=1024 instead of "of=/dev/evms/sda17". Explanation (if anybody needs one): Kernel can't create more partition devices than 15 for SCSI and SATA disks because of lack of minor numbers. So I am using evms to create these devices. So I should use /dev/evms/sda* for these partitions. And if I will not remember to do so then I will get oom panic very shortly because ramfs is not limited (in contrary to tmpfs). And this kind of stupid mistake can happen. It happened to me 3 times in a row before I started to debug what is wrong with this kernel. [BTW. Does somebody know how to tell the kernel that I do not want /dev/sda[0-9]* files (but I do want /dev/hda files) created == I do not want kernel partition driver to touch this particular device?] And using ramfs for anything else can easily lead to similar problems. So I think we do not need ramfs. Am I wrong? [I understand that removing it will not remove much code.] Thanks, Grzegorz Kulewski - 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/