On 8/24/07, Felix Miata <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 2007/08/24 20:18 (GMT+0200) Carlos E. R. apparently typed: > > > Friday 2007-08-24 at 13:44 -0400, Felix Miata wrote: > > >> On 2007/08/24 14:41 (GMT+0200) Andreas Jaeger apparently typed: > > >> > "Carlos E. R." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > >> >> Is there any hope of increasing the 16 partition limit some time in the > >> >> future? > > >> > No - > > >> Because it's a kernel design issue, something SUSE/Novell has little or no > >> control over. > > > Well, they can assign developers to scsi and develop patches that add > > support for more than 16 partitions to scsi modules. If technically > > possible, of course (I don't know what is the origin of that limit). Or > > invent something different than scsi for both scsi and ata. > > This is nothing ordinary patching can solve. It's a fundamental kernel design > problem. SCSI has always had the 15 partition limit because its device node > major is 8. To change it to something less, which would be required to allow > more than 15 SCSI partitions, would require major backward compatibility > breakage in kernel design. Novell developers wouldn't likely try anything > significant without major participation from the kernel development community > and the Linux community generally.
Libata being a part of scsi is considered a major shortcoming. The plan according to the lkml-ide list is to eventually seperate it out into its own infrastructure. Maybe use a /dev/diskX type of naming convention. If that is done they should be able to support more partitions again. FYI: The core libata devels that I see on lkml-ide are: Jeff Garzik - libata architect - Redhat employee Tejun Heo - libata coder and extender - Novell employee Alan Cox - libata/pata implementer - Redhat employee In particular without Tejun Heo of Novell, the kernels sata support would not have advanced much in the last couple years. Jeff just doesn't seem to have time to do much more than review the massive amount of new code that Tejun produces. As an example 80% of Tejun's PMP code has still not been reviewed by Jeff and that was submitted a couple months ago. So if Novell is going to make a kernel push to support 16+ partitions with libata it will likely be via getting Tejun to do the hard work of turning libata into a full fledged subsystem under the overall direction of Jeff Garzik. Greg -- Greg Freemyer Litigation Triage Solutions Specialist http://www.linkedin.com/in/gregfreemyer The Norcross Group The Intersection of Evidence & Technology http://www.norcrossgroup.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
