At boot time, the kernel configuration finds out what devices there
are, which is very nice. However, said devices need to be turned on to
be recognised. Fair enough.

But what if you have a scsi tape unit that's mostly turned off (because
you don't need it very often) and so you reboot without the tape unit
being turned on. With Linux you absolutely need to reboot before you
can use your tape.

Could NetBSD do better? (Not only for scsi buses necessarily but on any
bus that could potentially have devices that are not switched on at
boot time)

I realise that the dynamic mapping of scsi targets to devices (st*
at scsibus? target ? lun ? ) could not work, but a fixed mapping could.
(Or am I being silly and it works already - I cannot try this myself).

-Olaf.
--
___ Olaf 'Rhialto' Seibert    rhialto@mbfys.kun.nl         What's the use of
\X/  racism if you can't even see if a person belongs to your abhorred kind?