In some email I received from David Laight, sie wrote:
> On Thu, May 16, 2002 at 11:11:44PM +1000, Darren Reed wrote:
> > In some email I received from der Mouse, sie wrote:
> > > > Then again, does it really matter if the major number for
> > > > /dev/console is 1048219 or /dev/wd1a has a major number of 390342 ?
> > > > So long as MAKEDEV knows what they areit shouldn't be a problem,
> > > > right ?
> 
> Except that MAKEDEV isn't executed on every reboot....
> > 
> > Tell me, do you care what inode number /etc/passwd has ?  Or /root ?
> > What difference does it make if the major number for a device is X or Y ?
> 
> The difficulty is that if you change any of the major numbers you
> can't boot an old kernel.  This makes the upgrade somewhat tricky
> - especially for the developers who definitely won't get it right
> first time :-(

I'm feeling in a good mood tonight, so I will just ask this: how often
do you boot a 1.4 or 1.3 kernel on a 1.5 system ?  AFAIK, NetBSD is not
designed to work like that.  A 1.5 kernel on a 1.4 system maybe, or more
likely mixing -current and 1.5.  I do see the problem though, but I'm
sure there have been more (or at least equal) drastic things in the past ?