> We could do that. :-) But the whole point of wedges was to get partition
> info out of the kernel. :-) Now we're having to put it in the kernel
> config files. :-(

Somehow I just _knew_ that was going to be misunderstood.

What I was getting at with the 'ffs0 at bsdlabel0 partition 0' stuff was
that the problem of manipulating the partition hierarchy is very similar
to the problem of manipulating the USB device hierarchy, or the PCMCIA one,
or the FireWire one.

For years we have been dodging the fact that the kernel likes wired devices
but modern hardware is fundamentally not easy to wire down.

Partitions, as a sort of virtual device, have always been hot-pluggable,
but unix in general has historically used various simple kludges to avoid
acknowledging this fact.

Frankly I am not ethused about any of the wedge proposal variants currently
on the table.

I want something that can tell me how to find the console keyboard no matter
what USB hub it's plugged into; this is (almost) the same problem as finding
the root device buried inside a few levels of nested partition maps.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com