From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Ric Wheeler Subject: Re: tools support for non-512 byte sector sizes Date: Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:54:16 -0400 Message-ID: <488F6758.8080907@redhat.com> References: <488F524F.6020905@redhat.com> <20080729182611.GB24924@parisc-linux.org> <1217356645.6103.48.camel@localhost.localdomain> Reply-To: rwheeler@redhat.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:39468 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1750712AbYG2Sys (ORCPT ); Tue, 29 Jul 2008 14:54:48 -0400 In-Reply-To: Sender: linux-ide-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: linux-ide@vger.kernel.org To: "Martin K. Petersen" Cc: James Bottomley , Matthew Wilcox , linux-scsi@vger.kernel.org, linux-ide@vger.kernel.org, Jim Meyering , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Jeff Garzik , Matt Domsch Martin K. Petersen wrote: >>>>>> "James" == James Bottomley writes: >>>>>> > > James> The problem, which ata_ram also suffers, is that the tools we > James> most need to test are the ones for manipulating non volatile > James> characteristics (like partition tables). We'd really like the > James> disk contents to survive reboot for this ... > > Yeah, I should add that I wanted persistence too. I went through a > whole stack (well, 5-6 or so) fibre channel drives from various > vendors and attempted to low-level format them to 4KB sectors. Most > of them laughed in my face. One of them tried to comply and > irreparably confused its firmware in the process. > > Just yesterday I received a couple of prototype drives in the mail. > I'll ask the vendor whether they support 4KB and if so I'll give them > a whirl. > Isn't this a great use case for a SCSI target device where our target can be a software disk on a remote host? What is missing for us to put something like that together? ric