(2011/06/19 4:55), Kay Sievers wrote: > On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 21:40, James Bottomley > <James.Bottomley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> On Fri, 2011-06-17 at 09:22 -0700, Greg KH wrote: >>> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 06:12:14PM +0200, Kay Sievers wrote: >>>> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 17:39, Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >>>>> On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 16:49, James Bottomley >>>> >>>>>> So this is subsystem specific. For the case of a SCSI enclosure, I can >>>>>> answer that it's actually burned into the enclosure firmware. When you >>>>>> build an enclosure with labels, the label names are stored in a >>>>>> diagnostic page. We can actually interrogate the enclosure directly or >>>>>> use the ses driver to get these names mapped to current devices. >>>>> >>>>> To me this sounds like a nice name on top of the current bunch of >>>>> names, not like a 'preferred' name. >>>>> >>>>> I still don't like to introduce any new facility to the kernel that >>>>> can handle only one single name. Reality the last years has taught us >>>>> a very different story, and we've walked a long way to get where we >>>>> are. I really don't believe single names will ever work, it's just a >>>>> nice theory. >>>> >>>> I might need to clarify this a bit. >>>> >>>> I have no problem in general to add a 'alias' to every disk, and use >>>> that when stuff is logged. Just the same way the netifs have an alias. >>>> Sure, it might be useful for some use cases. And if that helps to >>>> solve any real problem, we should just do it. >>>> >>>> I just want to make clear, that I don't think that it is anywhere near >>>> to a solution for the problems which are described here. And that >>>> nobody should see this as an excuse not to get their stuff together >>>> and work on the problem, which is that we don't have machine-readable >>>> error and debug from the kernel and a smart syslog. >>>> >>>> If we had that, I'm very sure nobody would even ask for a 'pretty >>>> name' in the kernel, and I think that is a good indication that we are >>>> not on the right track here. >>> >>> And I totally agree here, which is why I don't want to accept this >>> change to the driver core to add this, as it's not the correct solution. >> >> OK, fine ... we'll do it as gendisk only then. I suppose that is the >> 95% use case anyway. > > Sounds fine. It's probably easier to have it domain-specific anyway. > Just like the netif alias already is. > Agreed. Our purpose is to output disk's alias name in kernel messages. > I would suggest not to call it 'preferred' though, but something > similar to 'alias'. Having /dev/disk/by-preferred/ doesn't sound too > convincing to me. > OK, I will change 'preferred name' to 'alias name'. > An 'change' uevent when the alias is set sounds fine. I don't think a > set-once policy is needed. > I will intent to implement as follows - Change the name from preferred to alias - Add alias_name in gendisk - Notify 'change' uevent when the alias is set Thanks, -- Nao NISHIJIMA Software Platform Research Dept. Linux Technology Center Hitachi, Ltd., YOKOHAMA Research Laboratory Email： nao.nishijima.xt@xxxxxxxxxxx -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-scsi" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
