I see 2 topics here, not one.
1) Larger dev_t
2) Identifying a fs by a means other than dev_t
Seems to me everyone agrees on 1). Whether it should be 32-bits or
64-bits is not agreed on yet though (I vote for 64). Slicing and
dicing up the bits has not been decided on either, and Linus
has made his terms clear on this issue (it's a driver matter).
Solving 2) has not really been discussed all that much. I think
it is do-able at either the fs or file level (ie. ID tags).
Simply put: tell mount you have block devices A B C D E F G and mount
them so that every fs lands in the right place. This might be
done entirely in the user space by a new 'mount'.
Thoughts anyone?
-- Andrew E. Mileski mailto:aem@ott.hookup.net My home page http://www.redhat.com/~aem/ Linux Plug-and-Play Project Leader. See URL http://www.redhat.com/pnp/Red Hat Software sponsors these pages - I have no other affilitation with Red Hat Software, and I have never used any of their products.