linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] stat: don't fail if the major number is >= 256

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Date:   Mon, 11 Apr 2022 08:16:43 -0700
From:   Christoph Hellwig <hch@...radead.org>
To:     Matthew Wilcox <willy@...radead.org>
Cc:     Mikulas Patocka <mpatocka@...hat.com>,
        Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Alexander Viro <viro@...iv.linux.org.uk>,
        linux-fsdevel@...r.kernel.org, linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: [PATCH] stat: don't fail if the major number is >= 256

On Mon, Apr 11, 2022 at 04:03:37PM +0100, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> Is it better?  You've done a good job arguing why it is for this particular
> situation, but if there's a program which compares files by
> st_dev+st_ino, it might think two files are identical when they're
> actually different and, eg, skip backing up a file because it thinks
> it already did it.  That would be a silent failure, which is worse
> than this noisy failure.

Agreed.

> The real problem is clearly that Linus denied my request for a real
> major number for NVMe back in 2012 or whenever it was :-P

I don't think that is the real probem.  The whole dynamic dev_t scheme
has worked out really well and I'm glade drivers don't need a major
allocation anymore.  But I'm not sure why the dynamic major had to be
past 255 given these legacy issues, especially as there are plenty of
free ones with lower numbers.