In article <20001228103926.A5870@spathi.chuq.com>,
	Chuck Silvers <chuq@chuq.com> writes:
> actually this change is not completely backward compatible.
> if someone has created device nodes with those upper minor bits set
> (ie. for /dev/sd385792385a or whatever the number turns out to be),
> then those device nodes would no longer refer to the same device
> after this change.

You are basically right but I honestly doubt that there is any system
with more than 65536 disk devices. And if there is such a system the
32Bit device number system is already at is limits such one bit less
doesn't really make a difference.

> I think we should consider a logical volume manager design
> rather than continuing to fiddle with fixed-partitioning.

As a long term sollution this would of course be better. But it won't
come soon and the the 8 partition limit is a problem which already hit
*many* people in the past. It should definitely not survive another
NetBSD release.

	Kind regards

-- 
Matthias Scheler                                         http://core.de/~tron/