"'15 partitions (at least for sd_mod devices) are too few,' Jan Engelhardt suggested along with a patch to try and make the mounting of an unlimited number of partitions possible. H. Peter Anvin proposed as an alternative, 'now when we have 20-bit minors, can't we simply recycle some of the higher bits for additional partitions, across the board? 63 partitions seem to have been sufficient; at least I haven't heard anyone complain about that for 15 years.'
"Alan Cox explained, 'this was proposed ages ago. Al Viro vetoed sparse minors and it has been stuck this way ever since. If you have > 15 partitions use device mapper for it. I'd prefer it fixed but it's arguable that device mapper is the right way to punt all our partitioning to userspace...'"
