How can I determine the number of /potential/ disk devices (sd(4)) that a system MIGHT support -- *if* the drives had been installed prior to boot? E.g., if I have a 15 slot backplane but only have a drive installed in slot 13, then *that* appears as sd0 and there is no mention of the potential for the other 14 drives.
Presumably, I can wire down each sd(4) device to correspond to a particular "slot" (SATA port) in the machine when I build a kernel with that in mind. [This allows software to KNOW that sd0 is "the drive in the top left slot" even if there is no drive present there when the machine boots] How can I configure a kernel to support a very large number of (wired down) drives even if the hardware to support those drives isn't present (I'm thinking about the case of having a couple of disk shelfs which may/may not be present at any given time)? Or, where does the probe actually take place (module name) and I'll dig through the sources myself...
