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Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 15:21:43 -0700
From: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
To: Andries Brouwer <aebr@win.tue.nl>
Cc: greg@kroah.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] print_dev_t for 2.6.0-test1-mm
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Andries Brouwer <aebr@win.tue.nl> wrote:
>
> 
> > Why do we need the 16:16 option?
> 
> It is not very important, but major 0 is reserved, so if userspace
> (or a filesystem) hands us a 32-bit device number, we have to
> split that in some way, not 0+32. Life is easiest with 16+16.
> (Now the major is nonzero, otherwise we had 8+8.)
> Other choices lead to slightly more complicated code.
> 

Why would anyone hand the kernel a 32-bit device number?  They're either 16
or 64, are they not?