Re: possible SCSI device numbering solution

Andrew E. Mileski (aem@nic.ott.hookup.net)
Thu, 27 Jun 1996 10:33:02 -0400 (EDT)

> The problem seems to me to be a matter of being able to
> identify a drive. Ultimatly you want to be able to move
> the drive about, and controllers, change the drive ID.
>
> What NT does is places a tag on the drive, when it first
> sees it. This means that it can identify the drive later
> and remember drive mappings for it.
>
> Why don't we do a similar thing, tag the drives, and then
> generate the device name based on the tag, or a known
> label associated with the tag. The partition number would
> then become a number postfixed to the drive label.

I had the same idea (as have others). I think this is _possible_
on _ALL_ fs types that are writeable (how to handle a CD-ROM?).
NFS wouldn't work though (or could it?).

The tag could be put in the superblock where possible, or a read only
(hidden?) file when not. A tag could be as simple as an 'int'.

I think this would mean changes to the 'mount' utility and fstab
format though.

--
Andrew E. Mileski
mailto:aem@ott.hookup.net      My home page http://www.redhat.com/~aem/
Linux Plug-and-Play Project Leader. See URL http://www.redhat.com/pnp/


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