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Subject: Re: [RFT] #2 Support for ~2144 SCSI discs
To: rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca (Richard Gooch)
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2001 17:34:18 +0100 (BST)
Cc: alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk (Alan Cox),
        adilger@turbolinux.com (Andreas Dilger), linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org
In-Reply-To: <no.id> from "Richard Gooch" at Aug 02, 2001 09:47:18 AM
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From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
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> That said, in 2.5 I want to see us move away from using device numbers
> as the fundamental device handle and move to device instance
> structures. That's a lot cleaner, and BTW is devfs-neutral
> (i.e. doesn't need devfs to work). Exposing a 32 bit dev_t to
> user-space is acceptable, but internally it should be shunned.

You need it internally otherwise you are screwed the moment you have 65536
volumes mounted - because you run out of unique device identifiers for stat.

Fortunately 32bit dev_t (not kdev_t .. which I think is what you are talking
about and will I assume go pointer to struct) is only one syscall change