Re: maximum of 256 loop devices - not enough for cdrom server

From: Jose Luis Domingo Lopez
Date: Thu May 26 2005 - 15:17:01 EST


On Thursday, 26 May 2005, at 03:06:34 +0200,
roland wrote:

> Is there a possible solution for this "problem" ?
>
Beware: not a kernel hacker, not even a proficient programmer.

It seems it would be easy, just changing the max current loop device
number value (256) to something higher (i.e., 4096). Note, however, that
loop devices are described by an array of structs statically allocated at
module load time, so expect memory usage to grow linearly and search operations
on the array become slower at least linearly.

There is one thing that maybe would need some attetion: minor number
allocation for loopback block devices. Now they are assigned at module
initialization, but I don't know the current status in the Linux kernel
with respect to (major,minor) sizes and allocation.

Hope someone more knowledgeable jumps into this :-)

Greetings,

--
Jose Luis Domingo Lopez
Linux Registered User #189436 Debian Linux Sid (Linux 2.6.11.10)

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