From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:16:24 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:16:24 -0500 Received: from hera.cwi.nl ([192.16.191.8]:59354 "EHLO hera.cwi.nl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Thu, 27 Mar 2003 15:16:24 -0500 From: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2003 21:27:37 +0100 (MET) Message-Id: To: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl, zippel@linux-m68k.org Subject: Re: 64-bit kdev_t - just for playing Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org > It would really help, if you would explain how a larger dev_t > will work during 2.6. > How is backward compatibility done, so that I can still boot a 2.4 kernel? Old device numbers remain valid, so all changes are completely transparent. > How have user space utilities to be changed, which know about > dev_t (e.g. ls or fdisk)? If you do not use mknod to create device nodes with large device numbers, then no new utilities are needed. If you really want to use large device numbers, you need a new glibc; some utilities will require recompilation because of the use of sysmacros.h. Andries