Re: [PATCH] 2.5.14 IDE 56

Linus Torvalds
2002-05-07T16:52:28Z

On Tue, 7 May 2002, Padraig Brady wrote:
>
> All the info I've ever needed is /proc/ide/hdx/capacity
> which I could get from /proc/partitions with more a bit
> more effort, so I vote for removing /proc/ide.

Note that one thing that we might do is to leave the remnants of /proc/ide
but _without_ the very verbose per-chipset reporting.

At least to me it looks like it's all the chipset reporting that causes
the huge kernel bloat, and it shouldn't be impossible to reinstate a
minimal /proc/ide without those parts - while still keeping most of the
backwards compatibility.

However, since I really don't much like the idea of having special
"ide-only" /proc files, I personally think any information people actually
used should be either in truly generic files (/proc/partitions as an
example), _or_ they should be in the generic device tree (talk to Pat
Mochel about that).

So my personal reaction to removal of /proc/ide is: "good riddance, but if
it turns out that we seriously need it for backwards compatibility, we can
add back a skeleton without the bloat".

(Side note: I'm afraid that don't think backwards compatibility weighs
very heavily on an embedded setup - I'm more thinking about things like "a
regular RedHat/SuSE/Debian/whatever install won't work any more".)

As to existing binaries (your list is interesting), I don't see what they
are doing about ide-specific stuff, since I sure hope those binaries are
happy with a SCSI-only system.

> For e.g. could the same arguments could be made for lspci only
> interface to pci info rather than /proc/bus/pci? The following
> references are made to /proc/bus/pci on my system:

I personally do like ASCII /proc files, as long as they don't add
maintainability problems etc.

Linus