Re: device syntax

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Oct 28, 2004, at 2:02 PM, Marco Gerards wrote:

> Hollis Blanchard <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > > devalias foo "/address@hidden/address@hidden/address@hidden/address@hidden,0"
> > > multiboot (foo,0)/boot/kernel
> >
> > I suspect it will be a point of confusion that a user can directly use
> > "hda" (a real/OF devalias) for their first disk, but if they want to
> > use their second disk they must add a devalias command to their
> > menu.lst file (or in OF itself).
>
> Why do they have to add it to the menu.lst?  You can add additional OF
> devaliases using the OF command line interface.  But there is no
> problem to make a temporary one either.

There should be no need.

> What Okuji described is exactly what I had in mind when I initially
> started working on the PPC port.  You can use devaliases in any case,
> although it would be nice if it is possible to use a full path, which
> is what your patch made possible.  But if the full path conflicts with
> the GRUB syntax, it just shouldn't be used...

I'm afraid I don't agree. GRUB should not be limited to the least 
common denominator of all the architectures it may be ported to. The 
GRUB device syntax was written solely with x86 PCs in mind; surely we 
can agree that all similar limitations have already been outgrown even 
on PCs themselves?

In fact, to extend the original PC BIOS -> "hd0" numbering scheme, we 
*could* enumerate every block device found in the Open Firmware device 
tree, and name them all "hd0" through "hd47". The user confusion that 
already exists on PCs would be multiplied greatly. That is not a good 
idea.

devaliases are fine and are convenient, but full device paths are 
important and should be equally usable (and not by going through extra 
steps to pretend that "/address@hidden/address@hidden/address@hidden/address@hidden,0" is really 
"hd0" just because there's a comma in there).

People who focus on PCs and Macintosh understandably might not consider 
this important, but on servers this is a very real issue.

-Hollis