In some email I received from Ignatios Souvatzis, sie wrote:
[...]
> > 	Consider my disk has name `sd0' (because it was detected first during
> > 	the kernel booting). Later  I will add ZIP  drive and IT will get the
> > 	name `sd0' and hard  disk will  become  `sd1'.  Bad  surprise, manual
> > 	intervention required.  Something like `/dev/scsi/dsk/c0d0p0' as root
> > 	fs unique identifier will help.
> 
> If you insist to make your boot drive scsi id 1, and not having any fixed
> disk scsi id 0, you can still wire down the sd unit of your root disk in 
> your kernel configuration.
> 
> Just don't force me to do the same, when I don't need it.

Just for reference, Solaris doesn't let you recompile the kernel so you
can't fix drive names to drive addresses so it needs the address to be
in the filename.  Linux suffers a similar problem where they name drives
as they discover them, in sequential order and whilst you can compile
your own kernel, you can't wire down device names to device addresses,
hence the push for "devfs".  The same is true for other commercial Unixes
I've used - they don't let you wire down the drive name to an address but
they give you the drive address in the device name.

If NetBSD were to support long disk device names which were actually
addresses to the device, it'd just mean it were possible to be even
lazier in using NetBSD.  It would also require some extra magic - be
it a special filesystem type or running a configure program at bootup.

The convience factor is large, in supporting that scheme, but the
resistance within NetBSD would be larger still (unless someone wrote
it themselves).

Darren