On 6 Nov 1999, Gordon Matzigkeit wrote:
> Personally, I dislike the `/dev/' prefix because it is misleading. I
> dislike it in Mach, too (where you can specify the location of a boot
> script using `/dev/XXX' as a synonym for `XXX').
>
Me too. I had to really break my head when it came to doing the
"print_completions" support. But the only goal was to have compatibility
with the BSD syntax, and memorizing different syntaxes for different
commands sounds irrational, even though being classically powerful. Also I
had left out only the IDE and SCSI detection part, and if you would like
to work on it, you can use the already existing base. Nothing else needs
to be changed, it just works fine.
> It is unambiguous (because every other filename must begin either with
> `(', `/', `+', or a number). It clearly separates the device name
> from the filename, thereby reducing confusion about what the `/dev/'
> directory is.
I had worked on the fact that every filename will definitely start
with a "/dev/hdXsX/whatever/you/like", so "/whatever/you/like" can be
correctly deciphered. And complete device names will definitely be of the
form "/dev/hdXsX" or "/dev/hdXsX+" or something like that.
More so, the "/dev" prefix though not important, is probably
necessary for novice users to understand, because they don't know that
GRUB can't use the kernel to make calls to the device, but makes some
rudimentary assumptions and calculations based on the device name we
provide.
> Minix! Cool. Do you need a chainloader, or does GRUB recognize the
> kernel properly by itself?
I had used chainloading, because GRUB couldn't recognize the
kernel. I don't much remember how it worked, right now I have my Minix
system in a complete mess, and haven't booted it for quite a long time.
Ashutosh Rajekar
http://i.am/asr
