[Novalug] Device naming.

[Bryan J. Smith]

This is the crux of the problem.  People don't want to "deprogram"
themselves from very narrow understandings and concepts.  They
don't want to separate out details.

E.g., what you assume about partitions are _legacy_ PC BIOS/DOS only.

Furthermore, your assumptions on "drive letters" ** are clearly based on
a combination of DOS assumption and utter lack of why "distributed
directory trees" are actually much better.

Linux's Logical Volume Manager (LVM) and NT 5+'s Logical Disk
Manager (LDM, aka "Dynamic Disc") are two approaches to making
a volume management completely firmware agnostic.  NT 5+ also
allows what is known as an "anchor" which is similar to a mount point
precisely _because_ "DOS did it _wrong_" ** (don't get me started
on this, along with OpenGL v. DirectX and countless other things that
core Microsoft architects will agree with me, and not you, on ;).

Red Hat's Logical Volume Manager (LVM) documentation for the
latest update of Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 5 is here:  
  http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html/Logical_Volume_Manager_Administration/index.html  

More advanced udev / DeviceMapper / Multipath features along with
"best practices" for on-line storage reconfiguration are discussed in these
guides:  
  http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5.4/html/DM_Multipath/index.html  
  http://www.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/html/Online_Storage_Reconfiguration_Guide/index.html  

I'll give Jim some credit, because he actually has expectations on
GRUB-Linux because he's used to common RISC/UNIX platforms.  The
legacy PC BIOS firmware approach is a major PITA, because there
are no real facilities and standards for BIOS-OS device and other
interaction (see the prior DMI for example).

However, solutions like Intel's EFI (although still with some rough spots),
in some server firmware and Apple Mac's with Intel processors _do_ address
the boot, renaming and other issues.  But until we get away from the legacy
PC BIOS/DOS limitations, we will always have a separate firmware from
bootloader from OS naming scheme.

That's 100% the problem with PCs, not Linux.  On non-PC architectures,
Linux is often just as sweet as other UNIX platforms when it comes to the
boot, hand-off, naming, etc...  In fact, we have revisited this over and over
in countless threads on DMI, PXE, etc... -- things that have been "slapped
on" to the PC firmware that are _standard_ in "well designed, single
vendor" platforms.  ;)


They are PC issues.  DOS is dumb and mindless.  It's great that you learned
the details of DOS.  But this is the 21st century.

-- Bryan

**P.S.  Furthermore, the concept of a "drive letter" in DOS was because it
was an _illegal_ rip of CP/M (settled out of court by IBM on behalf of Microsoft
and itself for $800,000), which did _not_ have the concept of directories
at all.  For DOS 2.0, Microsoft legally dripped the directory, redirection and
other code from SCO Xenix (which would later be a copyright liability for
Microsoft).  The "distributed mount point" is drastically superior from just about
everyone's perspective -- most notably core Microsoft architects who think
the C: drive is a severe limitation.  ;)

P.P.S.  Most of your other commentary on Linux just proves you're 7+ years
outta date.  Like it or not, Linux is moving forward.  Learning little details
every 5-7 years is not difficult.  Linux is multi-platform, multi-lingual, whether
people like it or not.  DOS was simple and could be understood.  Linux is
1,000x the complexity and you either have to learn the same level of
internals, or you leave it to the automated facilities.  Unlike NT and it's complex
mess, at least you still can with Linux!


----- Original Message ----
From: Alan Grimes <agrimes at speakeasy.net>

I hesitate to ask: Huh??? What???

I learned about partitions the hard way in the late (fuck, can't type
numbers today; talking about the eighties...) Oh numbers just started
working again, ARGH!!!

/me recites his mantra

SHOW ME THE DOCS!!!
GIVE ME LINKS!!!!
GIVE ME GOOGLE SEARCH TERMS THAT WILL FIND THE DOCS IN THE FIRST TEN
RESULTS!!!

Otherwise, STFU.

Then how does it know what partition has my programs and which has my
anime?

In DOS it didn't matter because no program really cared what drive it
was on or where it data was; In many cases you could manual set the
drive letter. You could also mount drives to paths as in linux and you
could treat directories as separate drives, DOS RULED. In linux you have
to mount crap in a specific place

... cut ... rest of rant ...