On Thu, 7 Aug 2003 Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl wrote:
> > The part I most object to are things like
> >
> > > + id->lba_capacity_2 = capacity_2 = set_max_ext;
> >
> > There have been many problems in the past, and it is a bad idea to add
> > more of this. We should be eliminating all cases.
>
> What problems? This reflects real change in drive's identify
> and I think should be replaced by rereading drive->id from a drive.
>
> In order to be able to troubleshoot problems we need to be able
> to reconstruct the information involved.
What problems are we talking about? :-)
> One part is the disk identity info that existed at boot time.
> It was read by the kernel, and stored. It is returned by the
> HDIO_GET_IDENTIFY ioctl, as used in e.g. hdparm -i.
>
> There is also the current disk identity info.
> It is found by asking the disk now, and is returned by e.g. hdparm -I.
What is a value of having these two identities
(other than questionable debugging aid which can be implemented
differently)?
> > We have info from BIOS, user, disk etc and conclude
> > to a certain geometry.
>
> I can't spot place when we get info from a BIOS.
>
> See arch/i386/boot/setup.S
> (I ripped out ide-geometry.c recently, so the use has diminished.)
Yep, this is no longer used.
> > Sneakily changing what the disk reported is very ugly. I recall a case
> > where a disk bounced between two capacities because the value that this
> > computation concluded to was not a fixed point. Also, the user gets an
> > incorrect report from HDIO_GET_IDENTITY.
>
> User gets correct report from HDIO_GET_IDENTIFY as drive's identify was
> really changed. Moreover HDIO_GET_IDENTIFY needs fixing to actually
> reread drive->id from a drive (similarly like /proc identify was fixed).
>
> There are at least two objections.
> First: we do not want the new identity, we want the old.
Question remains, what for?
> Second: if we ask the disk for identity again, you'll see that
> more than this single field was changed.
We are updating drive->id for changing DMA modes,
should this be "fixed" as well?
> If the user only wanted to know the current max size then there are
> other means, like BLKGETSIZE.
Yep, I think BLKGETSIZE should be used for such usages.
> > So, the clean way is to examine what the disk reported, never change it
>
> Even if disk's info changes? I don't think so.
>
> Yes. The disk geometry data that we use is drive->*
> What the disk reported to us is drive->id->*.
This is a contradiction if geometry of disk was changed cause
disk reported to us geometry data second time.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Aug 07 2003 - 22:00:37 EST