Re: Restoring HDIO_GETGEO semantics for 2.6 (was: Re: [RFC] Restoring HDIO_GETGEO semantics)

Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz
2004-07-05T18:53:10Z

On Monday 05 of July 2004 20:09, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Jul 2004, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz wrote:
> > On Monday 05 of July 2004 14:14, Szakacsits Szabolcs wrote:
> > > - nobody could point out any _technical_ benefit why the new
> > > HDIO_GETGEO code is better than the old one (the _way_ Andries wanted
> > > to
> >
> > Andries pointed it many times but you seem to completely ignore it
>
> Hmmm. I'm recovering people's partition tables in my spare time,
> voluntarily, free of charge when they got trashed due to Andries' and
> Andrew's bugs over the last two years (gpart, testdisk and parted's
> rescue mode don't always work),
>
> http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html#troubleshoot
>
> I reported them several bugs, hints, reasons, potential reasons, guesses,
> user feature request both privately and publicly.
>
> I do know very well Andries' arguments, I've learnt them the hard way.
> Actually I responded them several times, even in this thread.

OK

> > I also pointed out that IDE driver _doesn't_ need BIOS geometry et all.
>
> Thanks but I thought it was off-topic and think the same now, too. It was
> explained several times.

How can this be off-topic? In case of IDE disks HDIO_GETGEO is handled by
ide-disk driver. In 2.4 there was ide-geometry.c file (part of IDE driver)
which contained code for retrieving BIOS geometry (Andries removed it in 2.5),
Restoring 2.4 way of handling HDIO_GETGEO requires changes to the IDE driver.

> However none of you who responded seems to understand, still, what I want
> to say.
>
> You can't fix, for example, parted 1.6.11 and all earlier versions when
> one does a 2.4 -> 2.6 kernel upgrade. If a user uses an old enough tool on
> the new kernels then it can trash its partition table whatever the OS it
> is (not only the geometry but the layout in sectors, too).
>
> Also, sometimes [even very popular] distros ship one or two old tools, no
> need for kernel upgrade. Whenever a user use the shipped old tool on 2.6
> it can trash the partition table, being during install or later.

I understand this perfectly and I'm thinking about the best way to solve it.

> You, Bartlomiej Zolnierkiewicz, Andries Brouwer and Steffen Winterfeldt
> say don't care about those people. OK, at least now it's documented
> and this thread can be pointed out as a reference in the future.

Calm down because your false accusations are also documented now. ;-)

> Since there is nothing I could do more if maintainers aren't willing to
> fix their more destructive 2.6 kernel code, the case is closed from my
> part by this email.

Bartlomiej