Subject: Re: mounting non-BSD partitions.
To: Chris G. Demetriou <cgd@pa.dec.com>
From: Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>
List: current-users
Date: 06/21/1997 18:58:45
"Chris G. Demetriou" writes:
> > Unnecessary. Note that you can distinguish old and new trivially, by
> > the expedient of noting that the top 16 bits of old are always
> > zero. This means that /dev/console (as 0,0) is the only special case
> > you have to worry about.
> 
> Some ports (most notably the ARM port) put /dev/console at a different
> major number, FYI.

On such ports, our life is even easier, since there is resistance to
renumbering the console driver but I suspect little to renumber other
drivers. The important point is that only device 0,0 has an all 0
dev_t as it stands, so it is the only device that potentially breaks
the "if the top 16 bits are zeros, its an old device" rule.

Perry