Re: [PATCH 3/5] libata: Implement disk shock protection support

[Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>]

Elias Oltmanns wrote:
>> For libata, the easiest way to achieve the above would be adding a
>> per-dev EH action, say, ATA_EH_UNLOAD and schedule EH w/ the action OR'd
>> to eh_info->action.  The EH_UNLOAD handler can then issue the command
>> wait for the specified number of seconds and continue.  This will be
>> pretty simple to implement as command exclusion and stuff are all
>> automatically handled by EH framework.
> 
> I'm rather afraid this approach is impractical or unfavourable at the
> very least. Depending on the configured thresholds, a head unload
> request might well be issued unintentionally, e.g. by accidentally
> knocking against the table. It is quite alright for the HD to stop I/O
> for a moment but if the secondary device on the interface happens to be
> a CD writer, it will be very annoying to have CD writing operations fail
> due to minor percussions.

Why would it fail?

> Also, if there are two devices on the same
> port that support the UNLOAD FEATURE and you issue a head unload request
> to both of them in close succession, the IDLE IMMEDIATE to the second
> device will be blocked until the timeout for the first has expired.

Unload can be implemented as port-wide operation so that it issues IDLE
IMMEDIATE to all drives on the port but given that this is mostly for
laptop, this discussion is a bit peripheral.

-- 
tejun