On Jun 26, 10:25pm, Chris G. Demetriou wrote:
> Subject: Re: mounting non-BSD partitions.
> > Solaris and IRIX use a 10-bit major number with 22-bit minor numbers.
> > That seems to work just fine, so I'd suggest we use this existing
> > practice.
>
> On ther other hand, Digital UNIX and BSDI use 12/20.
>
> Given our relatively close relation in the UNIX family tree with those
> systems (Digital UNIX appears to be Mach + ~4.4 Alpha, and BSDI's
> lineage we know), i'd suggest using _that_ existing practice.
> (really, i just want NetBSD to interoperate with Digital UNIX more
> easily, for a variety of reasons.)

The only time I can see this being relevant is if either the device numbers
match the device numbers of the OS you are trying to be compatible with
(unlikely) or the device directory is nfs mounted. Now, whilst this might make
it marginally easier to setup network booting I would have thought that the
Right Way to do this would be to have a set of 'n-tools' ported to the major
vendor OSes which translate the device numbers on the fly.

Given this I think that the best thing to do would be to pick the scheme which
seems the most sane. This is largely a question of how many major numbers we
need (people will always run out of minor numbers however many bits you give
them).

I take it that as far as NFS is concerned this is all opaque.

Cheers

Rob Black