From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Subject: Re: RESEND: [PATCH] libata-sff: Fix oops reported in kerneloops.org
 for pnp devices with no ctl
Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 21:18:49 +0100
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To: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Jeff Garzik <jeff@garzik.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux-ide@vger.kernel.org

> The old function oopsed for the case that you worry about. That is WORSE 
> than anything else you can come up with. There is absolutely zero upside 
> to using that old and broken thing.

The worst case is uncaught data corruption. An oops is harmless in
comparison. Someone using altstatus to enforce DMA timing barriers and
getting nothing else will find their disk contents 'degraded'.

I'm just putting together a patch that removes ata_altstatus entirely
from public use, and that actually looks far nicer.