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Re: Where would I submit a new feature for the kernel?



At first I couldn't see much advantage to this since it's a minor task to
change a7 to b7 in lilo.conf after booting from floppy with b7mounted as
root to run lilo and install the boot manager.

It would be a nice touch for lilo to do this though.  It would mean you
could boot several systems in an office with a single floppy even if the
systems have different partition maps, as long as the labels are common.
Like having a skeleton key to carry around.

It would also enable me to boot correctly if I remove my a1 partition
(Win95) even though Linux would move from a2 to a1 in that case.

It sounds like a nice addition for lilo.  While your at it why not fix
lilo so it will look beyond the 1023'd cylinder.  That would be a grreat
fix as well.

On Fri, 2 May 1997, Dave Cinege wrote:

> I know this isn't a Debian question, but I have to start some place.
> What list/NG would be *best* to submit a new idea for the kernel?
> (actually maybe just lilo)
> 
> Problem: partition and drive shift 
> Solution: Name partitions like in the old Amiga days
> 
> How: Read the 'labels' of all partitions at start up and dynamiclly creates 
> entries in the /dev/ dir using that 'label' name with the correct 
> major/minor.
> 
> Example: If I have linux installed on Logical partition 7 and put that drive
> on another system, sda7 magically becomes sdb7 and linux will not boot with 
> out reconfiguring. This sucks. 
> 
> Example with fix: we mount /dev/linpar as root. We 'label' the linux 
> partiton linpar. The kernel starts up, and scans the labels of all the 
> partitions. It finds a type 83 with a label of linpar, and it creates a 
> /dev/linpar entry (or symlink) to the correct major and minor. 
> 
> If anything moves, linpar will always be linpar, no matter if it's 
> physically sda1, sda5, hdb1, etc.
> 
> Taken even futher, the same works with type 06 (FAT) and 07 (HPFS) (maybe 
> others) partitions using the standard DOS label for the name of the 
> partitions. Similarly if you have a FAT partition you mount as /usr1 you 
> don't have to worry where it physically is, as long as it is named correctly. 
> 
> I'll offer to help code this, it really looks quite easy to do.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
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> 
> 
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> 

--Rick

rickya@siservices.net


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