From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1030205AbWA3WvL (ORCPT ); Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:51:11 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1030206AbWA3WvL (ORCPT ); Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:51:11 -0500 Received: from prgy-npn2.prodigy.com ([207.115.54.38]:51344 "EHLO oddball.prodigy.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1030205AbWA3WvK (ORCPT ); Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:51:10 -0500 Message-ID: <43DE98B9.6010008@tmr.com> Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2006 17:52:41 -0500 From: Bill Davidsen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050920 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Jens Axboe CC: Albert Cahalan , Linux Kernel Mailing List , rmatthias.andree@gmx.de Subject: Re: CD writing in future Linux (stirring up a hornets' nest) References: <787b0d920601241923k5cde2bfcs75b89360b8313b5b@mail.gmail.com> <20060125144543.GY4212@suse.de> <20060125153057.GG4212@suse.de> <20060127080026.GR4311@suse.de> In-Reply-To: <20060127080026.GR4311@suse.de> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Jens Axboe wrote: > On Thu, Jan 26 2006, Jan Engelhardt wrote: > >>>You just want the device naming to reflect that. The user should not >>>need to use /dev/hda, but /dev/cdrecorder or whatever. A real user would >>>likely be using k3b or something graphical though, and just click on his >>>Hitachi/Plextor/whatever burner. Perhaps some fancy udev rules could >>>help do this dynamically even. >> >>And if you have multiple cdwriters? Then (cf. other posts) one has >>/dev/cdrecorder0 /dev/cdrecrder1, etc. To me, that's just as bad as having >>/dev/sg0 and /dev/sg1, because you don't have a clue at first sight what it >>maps to. > > > /dev/plextorwriter and /dev/hpwriter or whatever, it's just naming. > > >>"ls -l"? Sure, if cdrecorder0 was a symlink, but it does not work when it's >>not (= a block device in essence then). >>And I'm sure there's an analog program to "ls" to find what sg0 maps to. > > > You expect the gui user to follow symlinks to find out? > As opposed to? That's not a rhetorical question, please don't blow it off, what is the way for a user to go from /dev/sg0 to find out what device is really there? What is not easily available in Linux is a nice single place to find out what mass storage (disk/optical/floppy/ZIP/LS120/tape) devices are on the system, and what the system calls them. Because for low tech users udev is the problem, not the solution. The user doesn't want to tell the system what to call the device, he wants to see what's there, and that includes serial numbers of drives (where available) because if a user has several drives it's likely that they are identical. Telling the users to "cat /proc/scsi/scsi" and for n in /proc/ide/hd?; do echo -n "$n: "; cat $n/model; done is not a substitute for a presentation useful to programs and people alike. It could be in /proc or /sys or wherever is flavor of the day, but it would sure make things easier for the users. And before someone suggests that a program could generate this, a program would constantly chase the changing presentation of the information, a documented "file" in /proc or /sys would allow all applications to look in one place for the information. Instead of having the user tell the system what to call a device, let the system tell the user what it is called. Then the kernel could change without breaking anything in application land. -- -bill davidsen (davidsen@tmr.com) "The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the last possible moment - but no longer" -me