Re: Where would I submit a new feature for the kernel?
On Sat, 3 May 1997 09:27:50 -0400 (EDT), Rick Jones wrote:
>
>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.
Didn't think of that but yeah, that would also be advantageous.
>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.
This is what caused me to finally break linux. I moved OpenDOS from a
primary (sda2) to a logical (sda5).
Although it was only an 'aesthetic' change, and my partition geometry never
changed it caused a shift of all the logical drive partitions. sda11 became
sda12 and linux wouldn't boot : P
>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.
Well sure, why don't I just rewrite it to ; >
This is the problem, I know C but have never done anything for unix, let
along Linux specific items. I'm not sure where I would start, and if it
could be done totally in lilo, or if the kernel has to have a hand in it.
(Can lilo write to /dev/ before root is mounted!?!?!)
I also want to make sure I go through all the 'offical' channels, so this
becomes an adopted standard and not just some guys hack. The more you think
of it, the more you realize it is a very good and needed feature.
This is unix man.....I shouldn't have to deal with drive letter shift!
>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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