Re: Problems with limited numbers of partitions
On Thu, May 24, 2001 at 11:19:00AM +1000, Ross Hamilton wrote:
> Interestingly, he believes that the problem would apply equally to both
> SCSI and IDE disks since (by his recollection) the the partitioning code
> is implemented at a layer above the drivers and so would likely be the
> same for both drive types.
llama:~$ ll /dev/sda{,1,2,14,15} /dev/sdb{,1} # BTW, output hand-sorted :)
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 Mar 29 2000 /dev/sda
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 1 Mar 29 2000 /dev/sda1
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 2 Mar 29 2000 /dev/sda2
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 14 Mar 29 2000 /dev/sda14
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 15 Mar 29 2000 /dev/sda15
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 16 Mar 29 2000 /dev/sdb
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 17 Mar 29 2000 /dev/sdb1
The limitation of 16 partitions on a SCSI disk (err, make that 15, since
the whole-disk device takes up a minor number, too) is determined by the
device number allocation.
I bet it's really easy to change a non-devfs kernel to use more minors per
SCSI device, but this problem would go away with devfs. (It's not hard
unless you're in the middle of trying to learn linux, like when the default
.config has it enabled. Once you know what's going on, just run woody or
sid and install the devfsd package. You'll need a kernel that auto-mounts
devfs at boot, or you have to pass command line args to tell it to mount, or
you have to mount /dev at the top of the devfsd init script. The only
problems I've had so far are with (lack of) module auto-loading in response
to device use.)
--
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@llama.nslug. , ns.ca)
"The gods confound the man who first found out how to distinguish the hours!
Confound him, too, who in this place set up a sundial, to cut and hack
my day so wretchedly into small pieces!" -- Plautus, 200 BCE
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