On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 09:23:18AM +0000, David Brownlee wrote:
> 	We could allocate new matching device numbers for disks on both
> 	ports, and leave the old numbers as compat glue for each port,
> 	so old machines can continue to work but the results of a new
> 	MAKEDEV can be shared between ports...

We could simply do

 - enable magic symlinks in fstab and kernels on i386 and amd64
 - have i386 standard install create /dev.i386 and /dev.amd63, each
   popluated with proper content
 - ln -s /dev.${MACHINE_ARCH} /dev

Or:
 - create a sysctl to turn on/off the i386 compat magic (or patch a kernel
   variable, or build double sets of kernels - one with, one w/o ;-} )
 - only use compat magic on update installs
 - keep new dev numbers strictly in sync (like sparc and sparc64 do)


Martin