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

Roman Zippel
2004-07-07T11:15:23Z

Hi,

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Andries Brouwer wrote:

> How does a monster like that arise? Wart upon wart. Well, we guess, and
> usually right, but not always, then invent a correction to guess a bit
> better in some special situations, then ...
> And times change, and likely guesses become less likely, and changes are made ...
>
> At some point in time the monster must be eliminated.
>
> [..]
>
> Now this happened first in 2.5.6 if I recall correctly, over two
> years ago, and a few programs had to be adapted a little.
> I think fdisk, cfdisk, sfdisk, probably also lilo, were adapted rather
> quickly, but, as we discovered recently, parted took more time. Ach.

I basically agree with your argumentation, but it wasn't really eliminated
in 2.5.6. The kernel still provides some values to the users. If the
kernel doesn't know, it should clearly say so, this is where we fucked up.
Silently fixing a few applications and leaving everybody else believing
everything is well doesn't help.
At this point we either complete the job and remove this ioctl or we
restore the 2.4 behaviour (maybe with a deprecated warning).

bye, Roman