Re: [patch for playing] Patch to support 4000 disks and maintain backward compatibility

From: Joel Becker <Joel.Becker@oracle.com>
To: James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@steeleye.com>
Cc: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl,
	Linux Kernel <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	SCSI Mailing List <linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org>,
	pbadari@us.ibm.com
Subject: Re: [patch for playing] Patch to support 4000 disks and maintain backward compatibility
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2003 16:21:09 -0700	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20030411232109.GB4917@ca-server1.us.oracle.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <1050092073.2078.219.camel@mulgrave>

On Fri, Apr 11, 2003 at 03:14:32PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> > Linux does not arbitrarily break old systems. The aim must be
> > to have all combinations of (old/new) kernel with (old/new) glibc
> > to work well in all situations where old kernel + old glibc worked.

	100%

> Well, if you're going to do this, at least make it possible to tie all
> the sd devices to a single major (i.e. the numeric compatibility layer
> simply maps to the new single major scheme internally).  It would also
> be nice for numeric compatibility to be a compile time option too...

	The real issue is that almost all consumers of the new kernel
will have a /dev populated with old numbers.  Only new installs
(completely fresh) won't be burdened.  And new installs won't be the
majority of 2.6 users for quite some time after 2.6.0.

Joel

-- 

"Copy from one, it's plagiarism; copy from two, it's research."
        - Wilson Mizner

Joel Becker
Senior Member of Technical Staff
Oracle Corporation
E-mail: joel.becker@oracle.com
Phone: (650) 506-8127