On Thu, 2011-03-03 at 21:02 +0100, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
> > > Last I checked, it didn't help much. IMHO we need a driver that can
> > > display the drives in the order they're plugged in. Like Windoze.
> > > Like Linux. Like FreeBSD. I really don't understand what should be
> > > so hard to do it like the others. As one said "I don't have their
> > > sources", both Linux and FreeBSD are OSS software, so the source
> > > should be ready quite easuly.
> >
> > The difference is in the license. While I could look at what a
> > BSD-licensed driver does, I do not want to look at a GPL-licensed
> > driver and create problems for myself or my employer.
>
> It's no problem reusing methodics from a GPL driver in CDDL, but the code
> must be rewritten. Also, copying trivial parts won't break the license, but
> then, I guess the Solaris driver API is quite different from the one on
> Linux. Also, perhaps the FreeBSD driver works better at this?
>
What you're not realizing is that FreeBSD and Linux were designed with a
different set of assumptions. The basic assumption there is that you
won't disturb the probe order, either by adding hardware, or by having
hardware that simply is non-deterministic in probing.
Solaris doesn't do that. It enumerates the hardware the first time it
sees it, and then remembers the "physical" path to that disk as an
alias, usually both in /etc/path_to_instance and in the symbolic links
that populate /dev/.
The failure here is in your assumption that the Linux and *BSD behavior
is correct. It is correct in a small system that doesn't have to
concern itself with fallout from changes in the probe order due to e.g.
dynamic reconfiguration, but in enterprise systems where devices and
buses can be hot swapped, it fails miserably. The Solaris behavior is
simply better, once you learn to accept it.
- Garrett
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