Re: new tool: blktool

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@pobox.com>]

Mark Lord wrote:
> But there'll need to be some overlap between the old and new,
> and currently the libata driver has no way for smartmontools
> or hdparm to communicate and control drive features like
> the cache/readahead settings, and the various SMART capabilities.


Supporting the ATA Pass-through CDB in libata will enable support for 
all of those things.  I think we all agree that there needs to be _some_ 
way of letting userspace control these attributes via direct ATA command 
submission.

As an aside, although libata _will_ support some sort of user ATA 
command execution method, some of these attributes are (or will be soon) 
available through standard SCSI methods.

For example, MODE SENSE/MODE SELECT on the caching mode page allows one 
to toggle read-ahead and writeback caching.

blktool supports both methods :)

	Jeff