Re: PROPOSAL: /proc/dev
James Mastros (root@jennifer-unix.dyn.ml.org)
Thu, 8 Jan 1998 19:05:02 -0500 (EST)
On Wed, 7 Jan 1998, Stephen Harris wrote:
> Robert Bihlmeyer (robbe@orcus.priv.at) wrote:
> : Perhaps there is a real use for scanning the /dev directory, and I
> : just can't think of one...
>
> Just off the top of my head...
>
> # get a list of the first sector of all the hard disks on my machine...
> # ignore device errors, since we don't have that device!
> # Many known bugs here, but none that affect the point I'm making!!!
> cd /dev
modprobe -t block -a
> for a in hd* sd* xd*
> do
> dd if=$a of=/tmp/$a bs=1 count=512 2>/dev/null
> done
>
> Now, I may have a SCSI disk that is not normally mounted (it could have
> a different OS on it), and so the sd.o module isn't loaded, and so sda
> doesn't exist under your scheme and so I will miss some data.
There. Your scheme now works.
> This is a specific example of a general case: *searching* the system for
> devices that are available, but not in use.
Right... In this special case, you need to manually load the drivers. If
you can think of a scheme where ls /dev gives useful results, and that
script works... Yeha, thats what I thought.
-=- James Mastros
--
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