Lord Isildur drunkenly mumbled...
> 
> This is still Berkeley UNIX here. since the beginning, device names have
> followed the names of the relevant drivers in the kernel. something

this is the worst reasoning i have EVER heard.  we've always cross-threaded
our screws, so we will always cross-thread our screws.  just cause that's how
it was done it the past doesn't make it right, it makes it how it was done in
the past.

> named foo5 was probably the sixth (starting at 0) device configured by
> the driver foo. That's the important thing there- Berkeley UNIX already
> has a clear convention for naming devices based on what drivers configured
> them at boot time. The solaris-style naming i personally find to be
> absolutely awful, but aside from that, has no place in Berkeley UNIX. 
> If this were NetSysV or NetSolaris, then maybe that'd be appropriate. 
> this is NetBSD. 
> nobody says names have to be two letters. true, just about every disk
> device is named with two letters, but nobody said it has to be. 

no, this isn't NetSysV, or NetSolaris, and i don't want to see that any more
than you do.  HOWEVER, i just can't seem to wrap my brain around the concept
of "dynamic here, static there" that you are going to have to explain to me.

/dev/[device type][device id][slice info]

/dev/sd0a is slice 1 of the disk with SCSI ID 0.
/dev/sd3c is slice 3 of the disk with SCSI ID 3.

what is so terribly wrong and SysV about that? 

-brian