Re: [PATCH] New QStor SATA/RAID Driver for 2.6.9-rc2

Jeff Garzik
2004-09-14T17:37:58Z

On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 01:27:54PM -0400, Mark Lord wrote:
> Here's a question for you: like all of the other RAID drivers,
> this one needs an interface to a userland RAID management GUI.
>
> The usual method for this is to create a fake character device driver,
> and use that as the interface to userland. This is commonly done,
> but is it the best way to handle such? A /proc/ or /sys/ interface
> could achieve similar goals, but without the need of a fake device.
>
> We can go either way with this one, so lets hear some opinions on it.

Well,

* if the userland interface is 100% sending cdbs or taskfiles, then I
would prefer that Jens Axboe's "bsg" be used. Its a chardev interface
for sending/receiving commands to a request queue.

* otherwise, I would pick either chrdev or sysfs. if you gotta support
2.4, I guess that means chrdev.

> For the rest, this driver has been around (vendor driver) since before
> libata became usable, and certainly before libata existed in 2.4.xx.
> The driver will eventuall need to compile and run in 2.4.20,
> for customers using old Redhat kernels. It's not there yet,
> but if it were to lean more heavily on 2.6.xx stuff,
> then that will be more difficult to achieve.

libata and all its drivers work on RHEL2.1 (2.4.9), and someone is
even crazy enough to be porting libata to 2.2.x ;-)

Jeff