Re: lib/39215: getdevmajor()/major() types don't match

[Matthias Drochner <M.Drochner%fz-juelich.de@localhost>]

[major/minor numbers]
dholland%eecs.harvard.edu@localhost said:
> Well, in general they should be the same size as dev_t

There is no technical reason. As long as the information of
major/minor fits into the dev_t it is fine.
Major numbers are used as index into devsw, and minors into
device_t instance arrays. These are operations done at
runtime a lot, so one shouldn't use more than the processor
can handle natively.
Majors and minors are used only locally... not quite, there
is NFSv3 which transfers them explicitely, as 32-bit values
each. Would need some work to implement a translation layer.

best regards
Matthias




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