Re: What to do about the 2TB limit on HDIO_GETGEO ?

[Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de>]

On Wed, Mar 26, 2008 at 12:30:40PM +0100, Bodo Eggert wrote:
> Greg KH <gregkh@suse.de> wrote:
> > On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 04:05:32PM -0700, H. Peter Anvin wrote:
> 
> >>> How does this have anything to do with boot times?  Do you really have a
> >>> foolish shell script that iteratorates over every single disk in the
> >>> sysfs tree for every disk?  What does it do that for?
> >>
> >> Any time you want to get the sysfs information for a filesystem which is
> >> already mounted, that's what you're forced to do.
> >>
> >>> I thought we were talking about 2TB disks here, with a proposed new
> >>> ioctl, not foolishness of boot scripts...
> >>
> >> I pointed out that having a way to map device numbers to sysfs directories
> >> would have the same effect, *and* would be usable for other purposes.  I'd
> >> rather see that than a new ioctl, and another, and another...
> > 
> > Again, a simple udev rule will give you that today if you really want
> > it...
> 
> So e.g. lilo should depend on sysfs and *a*special*configuration* of udev,
> while the admin MUST NOT use mknod'ed device files nor manually create
> symlinks pointing to them, and not use relative path names?
> That's plain stupid.

If sysfs is stupid, then use an ioctl, have I objected to that?

> > And I think 'udevinfo' can be used to retrieve this information as well.
> 
> $ udevinfo /dev/hda
> missing option
> $ udevinfo /dev/hda --help
> Usage: udevinfo OPTIONS
>   --query=<type>    query database for the specified value:
>     name            name of device node
>     symlink         pointing to node
>     path            sysfs device path
>     env             the device related imported environment
>     all             all values
> 
>   --path=<devpath>  sysfs device path used for query or chain
>   --name=<name>     node or symlink name used for query
> 
>   --root            prepend to query result or print udev_root
>   --attribute-walk  print all SYSFS_attributes along the device chain
>   --export-db       export the content of the udev database
>   --help            print this text
> $ udevinfo --name=/dev/hda
> missing option
> $ udevinfo --name=/dev/hda --query=all
> P: /block/hda
> N: hda
> S: disk/by-id/ata-Maxtor_2F040L0_F1748ZQE
> S: disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-ide-0:0
> E: DEVTYPE=disk
> E: ID_TYPE=disk
> E: ID_MODEL=Maxtor_2F040L0
> E: ID_SERIAL=F1748ZQE
> E: ID_REVISION=VAM51JJ0
> E: ID_BUS=ata
> E: ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:0f.0-ide-0:0
> 
> 
> As you can see, it gives no major:minor information. But it is in the DB:

That should be easy to add, no one has ever asked for this information
from udevinfo before.  If it's needed, it can be provided.

> $ cd /dev/.udev/db
> $ grep -l hda * 2>/dev/null
> \x2fblock\x2fhda
> \x2fblock\x2fhda\x2fhda1
> $ cat "\x2fblock\x2fhda"
> N:hda
> S:disk/by-id/ata-Maxtor_2F040L0_F1748ZQE
> S:disk/by-path/pci-0000:00:0f.0-ide-0:0
> M:3:0
> E:DEVTYPE=disk
> E:ID_TYPE=disk
> E:ID_MODEL=Maxtor_2F040L0
> E:ID_SERIAL=F1748ZQE
> E:ID_REVISION=VAM51JJ0
> E:ID_BUS=ata
> E:ID_PATH=pci-0000:00:0f.0-ide-0:0
> 
> What a great tool - for making linux look bad.

Your constructive criticism is greatly appreciated, please continue.