Re: Working around bogus HPAs in libata

[Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>]

Hello,

On 04/06/2010 11:28 AM, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> If a system vendor puts its own name or model numbers on the disks it
> ships then I think the BIOS or other platform firmware can reasonably
> assume that it 'owns' and can write to the HPA on a disk with the
> vendor's identification.  (I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that
> some vendors take shortcuts though.)

I would be very surprised if no vendor took shortcuts.  :-)

>> Ah... I see, but let's fix that up too.  It could be worse to have
>> half working workaround than not working around at all.  I'll update
>> the patch once the currently pending HPA updates are in.
> 
> Oh, what are those?

The patch I posted is rolled up version which contained currently
pending HPA unlock on shrink patch.

  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.ide/45662

> I want to apply some version of this fix in Debian soon so we can
> complete the transition to libata.  I would very much appreciate it if
> you could answer whether or not the multiple 'capacity change' messages
> may indicate a problem.

Multiple messages are probably sd doing revalidation of the device.  I
don't think it will cause any problem but I'll look into it later
today and let you know.

Thanks.

-- 
tejun