Re: Request for comments (kdev_t and friends...)

Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl
Fri, 26 Nov 1999 03:44:24 +0100 (MET)


Linus writes:

: I'm pretty convinced that "kdev_t" is just broken.
:
: What we should have is to just make
:
: open_special_device()
: ..
: close_special_device();
:
: and hide a real pointer to a "struct block_device *" (or "struct
: char_device *" as it may be) in the file pointer.
:
: That "struct block_device *" would not have any resemblance to "dev_t" at
: all, and wouldn't have any of these MAJOR/MINOR issues. It would just
: contain the full data - size of the device, offset of the device
: into a "larger" device, pointers to the requests queues etc etc.
:
: So then the lookup would only ever be done once, at file open time. The
: actual read/write functions (and bread() etc) would use the full block
: device pointer and wouldn't need to search for anything at all..

But how is that different from the planned kdev_t?

Your "struct block_device *" is precisely kdev_t.

Andries

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