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From: dce@mips.UUCP (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards
Subject: Re: Large machines and tty naming conventions.
Message-ID: <550@quacky.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 30-Jul-87 11:06:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: quacky.550
Posted: Thu Jul 30 11:06:16 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Aug-87 03:00:50 EDT
References: <8550@brl-adm.ARPA>
Reply-To: dce@quacky.UUCP (David Elliott)
Organization: MIPS Computer Systems, Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 22

In article <8550@brl-adm.ARPA> jason@violet.Berkeley.EDU (Jason Venner) writes:
>
>Changing the declaration of dev_t to an unsigned long from a short,
>and modifying major() & minor() in types.h, and deleting some of the
>fill space in the stat structure (stat.h) would allow for more
>major/minor devices without complicating life too much

While I agree with your problem statement and scheme for directories
(and would also like to see a library routine for getting a useable
pty name), the above statement is not completely true.

You see, we really can't tell how much software out there relies
on the sizes of major and minor device numbers. The brain that
invented the cpio format in AT&T Unix never thought that these
sizes might change, so it has device numbers inside of it (I
implemented a fix for this in UTek, but I can't get to it).

I suggest using more major numbers for ptys and ttys before changing
the size of device numbers.

-- 
David Elliott		{decvax,ucbvax,ihnp4}!decwrl!mips!dce