> This is another thing that has always put me off. The > virtual block device driver has the ability to masquerade as > other types of block devices. It actually claims to be an > IDE or SCSI device allocating the appropriate major/minor numbers. > > This seems to be pretty evil and creating interesting failure > conditions for users who load IDE or SCSI modules. I've seen > it trip up a number of people in the past. I think we should > only ever use the major number that was actually allocated to us. We certainly should be pushing everyone toward using the 'xdX' etc devices that are allocated to us. However, the installers of certain older distros and other user space tools won't except anything other than hdX/sdX, so its useful from a compatibility POV even if it never goes into mainline, which I agree it probably shouldn't. Ian