>On Thu, 6 Aug 1998, Anthony Barbachan wrote:
>
>> >> I do not know about it similarity to other UNIX's (other than SUN/SCO)
>> but
>> >> /dev/sda is definately simple. As far a company goes they are not
going
>> to
>> >> care if their drive is named /dev/sda or /dev/dsk/sd/c0t0d0u0
(whatever).
>> >
>> > Except that it is MUCH easier to find a physical disk if you know the
>> >controller and target id of it.
>>
>> True but this could also be done with /dev/c0t0l0 (c = controller, t =
>> target, l = LUN) And I was mainly arguing against the previous writer's
>> insistance that having equally cryptic names will help Linux compete in
>> business.
>
> Except that you need slice in there somewhere, unless you wanted
>a directory for the /dev/c0t0l0, but that doesn't make much sense...
>
I know, just left it out, no sense adding the obvious. Add a p0 to the end.
And my argument is more directed to those devices which have low population
limits by nature.
> I don't think Linux would have any problem competeing for
>business if it used a /dev/c0t0d0u0 or whatever naming scheme, in fact
>I think it would help it to break into SUN shops. The /dev/sda naming
>scheme I feel would hurt when it comes to trying to get into businesses
>because it is very limited, and puts in place some rather hard limits.
>
Not really. After all there's nothing preventing us from looping to
/dev/sd1a after /dev/sdz. Or for hard coded device names /dev/sd1a for disk
at ID 0 on controller 2 and /dev/sda for disk at ID 0 on controller 1, etc.
>>
>> >> will make a difference is in the user who is used to
>> A:,B:,C:,COM1,LPT1,etc.
>> >> This type of person would be more likely to curse not praise the
>> verbosely
>> >> complex names that devfs "perfers" to use. I agree that SCSI
definately
>> >> needs a change to support large numbers of controllers and disks but
most
>> >> other devices EIDE,floppies,serial ports, etc do not and changing
their
>> >> current simple device names only (after the only device names are
>> removed,
>> >> which they will if devfs is added) breaks backward compatibility and
adds
>> to
>> >> the complexity of a Linux system. BTW, devfs is not consistant, at
least
>> >> not to Solaris and perhaps (I do not remember) not to Unixware either.
>> >
>> > Except that from what I understand it doesn't break backwards
>>
>>
>> It sort of does as if this is implemented then the old naming sceme will
>> probably be "depricated".
>
> Perhaps, but it doesn't break it, which is I think what mainly
>matters, it's kind of like PCI vs. ISA, you'll note that ISA is phasing
>out because of PCI, but that's not neccissairly a bad thing. I realize
>that was a bad analogy and I'm not interested in a debate over PCI vs.
>ISA, just an analogy.
>
>
>> >compatibility at all. EIDE I agree works okay the way it is w/
/dev/hda,
>> >but that's mainly because it's consistent and the /dev/hda access point
>> >doesn't change if you add or remove disks, it's directly associated w/
>> >controller 0, master drive. Floppy drives are /dev/fd0, closer in my
view
>> >to devfs already than /dev/sda is.
>> >
>> > Another issue, what happenes when a drive doesn't respond to
>> >SCSI probes? Happens all too often to me, and figuring out which drive
>> >died would be MUCH harder to do w/ /dev/sda than w/ /dev/c0t0d0s0, not
>> >impossible, but would certainly take a whole lot more time.
>>
>>
>> It would probably take a second to do
>>
>> dmesg | grep sda and read off the information
>>
>> or
>>
>> grep sda /var/adm/syslog and read off the information
>
> Well, I would hope you'd be able to do a tail -20 /var/adm/syslog
>and see from there what drive died, perhaps in both /dev/sda and
>/dev/c0t0d0s0 format... I realize that's a big change, but that's
>something I'd want in there before I'd want to use dev_fs...
>
> Stephen
>
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