Re: On re-working the major/minor system

[Kai Henningsen]

[e-mail] (H. Peter Anvin)  wrote on 09.12.01 in <9v0mo1$ms$[e-mail]>:

> By author:    [e-mail] (Kai Henningsen)

> > > The C library, and the POSIX standard, etc, etc.
> >
> > I think you'll find that there is *NOTHING* in either the C standard,
> > POSIX, or the Austin future-{POSIX,UNIX} standard that knows about major
> > or minor numbers.
> >
>
> It's not "future" anymore... Austin is now IEEE 1003.1-2001 and thus
> the new POSIX standard.

As of this Friday, yes.

> Anyway, look for things like tar, cpio, ISO 9660 and that class of
> standards.

Well, at least in Austin there is neither tar, cpio, nor 9660.

You are, however, right insofar as there's pax, which for ustar format has  
devmajor and devminor fields of 8 octets each, which contain unspecified  
information. (cpio format just has the rdev field.)

MfG Kai