On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 04:35:58PM -0700, Matthew Jacob wrote: > > > On Wed, 20 Apr 2011, Scott Long wrote: > >... > > > >I agree with what Alexander is saying, but I'd like to take it a step > >further. We should all be using either mount-by-label, or be working to > >introduce generic device names to GEOM. Right now, device names are an > >implementation detail that have no functional use other than to > >complicate the fstab. Disks exposed through the block layer are simply > >direct-access block-array devices, nothing more. There's no functional > >difference to the kernel or userland between ad, ar, da, aacd, mfid, > >amrd, etc when it comes to reading and writing sectors off of them. > >But yet we give them unique names and pretend that those names mean > >something. We could give them all the name of "disk" and the system > >would still function exactly that same. The name attributes are > >interesting when it comes to doing out-of-band management, but it's also > >trivial to create a human-readable map and a programatic API between the > >generic name and the attribute name. Same goes for volumes labels, and > >I'd almost argue that they're more powerful than generic device names. > > > >In other words, "ada" isn't the problem here, it's that we all still > >think in terms of the 1980's when systems didn't autoconfigure and > >device names were important hints to system functionality. That time > >has thankfully passed, and it's time for us to catch up. > > > > Still, keep in mind that conservative leanings have to be appeased. Back > in SparcStation1 development (1989) we kept on calling the root device > "Fred" as in "Let's boot fred now". > > That said, you would not *believe* the flack I took for having the root > filesystem on sd3 instead of sd0 in SS1, even though there was no reason > it couldn't have just been called "fred". It was YOU ?! Could you, please, share a story ? I am very interested. Thanks in advance.
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