[ On , April 20, 2002 at 03:31:6 (+0100), Iggy Drougge wrote: ]
> Subject: Terse device names
>
> Why are BSD device names so terse? It isn't very intuitive if your Etherlink
> III is called "ep" for no particular reason, and it even leads to naming
> conflicts. For example, "ed" is both the name for ESDI disks and a network
> controller, IIRC. Wouldn't it be nice if devices were called etherlinkiii
> instead of "ep" or etherexpress instead of "xi"?

Well short driver names are easier to type, and unless you have dozens
of different cards in many related systems it's unlikely you'll normally
encounter so many that you'll be too easily confused once you've figured
out what the drivers for the few you do have are called.

The documentation generally gives you enough hints to help translate the
full name to the driver name:

$ apropos etherlink
ec (4) - driver for 3Com Etherlink II (3c503) ISA bus Ethernet cards
ef (4) - 3Com EtherLink II (3c507) ISA Ethernet driver
eg (4) - 3Com Etherlink Plus (3c505) Ethernet interface device driver
el (4) - 3Com Etherlink (3c501) Ethernet interface device driver
elmc (4) - 3Com EtherLink/MC (3c523) MCA Ethernet driver
ep (4) - driver for 3Com Etherlink III Ethernet interfaces
ex (4) - driver for 3Com Fast EtherLink XL (3c900, 3c905, 3c980) and similar PCI bus and cardbus Ethernet interfaces

-- 
								Greg A. Woods

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