On Sunday 20 May 2007, Al Viro wrote:
quoted text
> On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 11:16:59PM -0700, Ray Lee wrote:
> > Ken? Ball's in your court. As the patch isn't providing a killer
> > feature for 2.6.22, I'd suggest just reverting it for now until the
> > issues are ironed out.
>
> Hold it.  The real question here is which logics do we want there.
> IOW, and how many device nodes do we want to appear and _when_ do
> we want them to appear?


of course we'd like to use exactly as many (or few) nodes as are in use rig=
ht=20
now and without fixed limit for their number; which implies that nodes shou=
ld=20
appear and go on as needed basis.

But right now there is no kernel mechanism that user level program could us=
e=20
to request allocation of new loop node. I won't discuss whether it is=20
legitimate to mandate new version of util-linux for kernel 2.6.22; but it i=
s=20
obvious that any kernel patch that adds such mechanism goes far beyond simp=
le=20
bug fix and is not acceptable at this stage.

So let's revert this change and discuss it for post-2.6.22 timeframe.