md/raid devices don't show up in /proc/partitions in 2.6 :-(

[Neil Brown]

I just noticed that md devices do not show up in /proc/partitions in
2.6.

I realise that they don't actually have partitions and are just 'whole
devices', but other whole devices do appear in /proc/partitions (Along
with their partitions if any).

This seems to be a regression from 2.4 where md devices do appear in
/proc/partitions.

The cause appears to be a patch from 'torvalds' some 15 months ago
(in version 1.36 for drivers/block/genhd.c) which has the comment:

      Avoid confusion "mount" and "fsck" - don't show things like
      floppies and CD's in /proc/partitions.

It excluded devices that cannot be partitioned, and devices with zero
size from /proc/partitions.

The 'zero size' possibly makes sense (2.4 excludes those), but I would
like to register a vote against excluding devices without partitions,
as this excluded 'md' devices and I would really like them to be
included.


Is there really a good reason for this?  How badly does mount get
confused? and is that not the fault of mount?

NeilBrown
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