Subject: Re: mounting non-BSD partitions.
To: None <perry@piermont.com>
From: Brian Hechinger <wonko@blackhole.arkham.net>
List: current-users
Date: 06/20/1997 17:24:40
Perry E. Metzger drunkenly mumbled...
> 
> The FreeBSD "slice" notation seems to be the current consensus. In it,
> my DOS partition in MBR slot 0 would be sd0s0c -- my boot partition on
> the NetBSD slice would be sd0s1a.

ok, in that vein, here is something to think about.  wouldn't it make a little
more sense (since we are going to change this anyway) to expand on that a bit.
let's look at a Solaris style slice.

/dev/dsk/c0t3d0s0

c = controller
t = SCSI id
d = uhm, i forget
s = slice (where slice in Solaris is equal to a, b, c, etc in NetBSD)

we could modify this a little to read: (i'm going to keep the letter notation
					even though i think it should change)

c = controller
t = SCSI id
d = slice
s = partition

so in Perry's example  sd0s0c would equal c0t0d0s2 and sd0s1a would be c0t0d1s1

i think that this naming technique has it's advantages and it's disadvantages,
but i would like to see this style of support for multiple SCSI hosts.  just
a thought.

> Its not perfect, but its better than what we have now, and its
> reasonably compatible with FreeBSD's notation which isn't any worse
> than any other notation we could use.

what does a second SCSI host look like under NetBSD??  if sd0a is root on SCSI
ID 0 and sd1a is root for SCSI ID 1 what would the root of SCSI ID 0 on a
second SCSI host look like?

> We need to move to 32 bit device numbers first, though -- the current
> 16 bit ones aren't going to be sufficient.

too true!!

-brian

-- 
** Brian Hechinger ** wonko@mail.arkham.net ** http://www.arkham.net **
--
"Yes, evil comes in many forms, whether it be a man-eating cow or
 Joseph Stalin, but you can't let the package hide the pudding!  Evil
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                                --The Tick