On Sat, 11 Dec 2010 16:34:56 -0500 (EST), Ben Hutchings wrote: > On Sat, 2010-12-11 at 13:14 -0800, Evan Broder wrote: >> If you pass a root= argument with a numeric device number >> (i.e. root=0806), that's currently resolved by running mknod to create >> a /dev/root device with an appropriate major/minor number and setting >> ROOT=/dev/root (the parse_numeric function in scripts/functions). > > Maybe this feature should simply be deprecated. What do you use it for?
Pardon me for butting in here, gentlemen, but I think I know the answer to Ben's question. This is done by a number of boot loaders. I know lilo does it, and I think zipl (part of s390-tools) does it also. If, for example, in /etc/lilo.conf one identifies the root device as root=/dev/sda6 then lilo's map installer converts this specification into a four-digit hexadecimal number, where the first two hex digits are the major number of the device and the last two hex digits are the minor number of the device. Thus, /dev/sda6 becomes 0806, meaning the device with major number 8 and minor number 6. At boot time, lilo passes a kernel command line to the kernel that says ... root=806 ... (the leading zero is suppressed). Chances are, the user is not directly specifying the root device as a hexadecimal number anywhere. The boot loader makes this substitution. lilo has done this forever, and zipl was patterned after lilo. -- .''`. Stephen Powell : :' : `. `'` `- -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
