Re: device syntax

[Hollis Blanchard]

On Oct 20, 2004, at 9:44 AM, M. Gerards wrote:

> Quoting Hollis Blanchard <address@hidden>:
>
> > On Oct 20, 2004, at 3:58 AM, Marco Gerards wrote:
> >
> > > Hollis Blanchard <address@hidden> writes:
> > >
> > > > I was thinking about how GRUB specifies device paths using
> > > > "(device,partition)/path" syntax. That's a problem because Open
> > > > Firmware device paths can contain commas. The legal character list 
> > > > is
> > > > the alphanumerics plus ", . _ + -". My Mac's video card is named
> > > > "ATY,Rage128y", and I'm pretty sure I've seen disks with commas in
> > > > their names.
> > >
> > > Does this problem occur for disks as well in practice?
> >
> > On my briQ, the hda devalias is 
> > "/address@hidden/address@hidden/address@hidden/address@hidden,0".
>
> But in that case you could use (hda,0), right?

Yes. But are you suggesting we will never see a comma in a device name 
in practice? It should be clear that on systems with more disks, not 
all of them will have devaliases.

The unit address of device nodes is represented in a bus-specific 
encoding, often including a comma as we have seen. Further, it is 
stated convention to encode the name of the device manufacturer into 
the node name with a comma. Have a look at IEEE1275's section on path 
names: the example they give is 
"/address@hidden,f8000000/SUNW,address@hidden,800000/address@hidden,0".

-Hollis