Re: tools support for non-512 byte sector sizes

[James Bottomley <James.Bottomley@HansenPartnership.com>]

On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 12:50 -0600, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 01:44:38PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> > On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 12:42 -0600, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> > > On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 01:37:25PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote:
> > > > scsi_debug does exactly the same thing, so it reports anything you tell
> > > > it (Martin Petersen actually added this so he could test with 4k
> > > > sectors).
> > > > 
> > > > The problem, which ata_ram also suffers, is that the tools we most need
> > > > to test are the ones for manipulating non volatile characteristics (like
> > > > partition tables).  We'd really like the disk contents to survive reboot
> > > > for this ...
> > > 
> > > Ummm... _reboot_, or _module unload/reload_?  I could certainly include
> > > an option to populate the ramdisc from a file.  Is the ioctl to re-read
> > > the partition table not enough?
> > 
> > reboot ... we'd like to take the tools through shutdown restart testing
> > to make sure they're all working ... of course, then there's the
> > bios ...
> 
> It's not up to us to fix the BIOS.
> 
> Since the vast majority of users use a distro, and the vast majority of
> distros use a fully modular kernel, wouldn't initialising the contents
> of ata-ram from the initrd/initramfs solve the problem?

Well ... we'd really like it file backed to truly verify ... sort of
like scsi_debug on a loopback.  But saving on shutdown and
reinitialising from the saved image on boot would likely be perfect.

James