Re: devfs

Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.CSIRO.AU)
Sun, 18 Jan 1998 16:11:47 +1100

linux kernel account writes:
> On Sun, 18 Jan 1998, Richard Gooch wrote:
>
> [snip]
> > > You're forgetting that someone researched this and reported that "s" and "d"
> > > originally stood for "device" and "subdevice", which is more general than
> > > partitions or slices and not inherently wrong for fdisk. That's the definition
> > > I adopted, not "slice". I still think that /dev/sd/c0b0t0d0 is a reasonable
> > > choice for a whole disk and /dev/sd/c0b0t0d0s1 etc for PC style partitions. If
> > > we need to incorporate further subdivisions for slices, we can easily extend
> > > this to /dev/sd/c0b0t0d0s1.2 to refer to slice 2 within PC partition 1. I
> > > think we should retain the convention of referring to logical partitions as
> > > subdevices 5..N for compatibility with present Linux systems.
> >
> > It does seem inconsistent to have letters delimiting all the other
> > parameters except the slices. If you can come up with a different
> > letter for "slice" which doesn't sound too contrived, I'd prefer
> > that. Right now 's' could be either "subdevice" or "slice". One could
> > use 'l' for discLabel, but that looks too much like '1'.
>
> Nope, it's a decmil number!!!

OK, but my point still holds: why not use decimal notation for the
whole thing? I.e.: c0b1t2d3s4.5 becomes: 0.1.2.3.4.5
The reason is simple: I hate it so I won't implement it. Arguments
sent to Linus ;-)

So, given the whole name isn't in decimal notation, why should the
partition/slice section use decimal notation?

Regards,

Richard....