2002-06-18 16:25:47

by Andre Hedrick

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Need IDE Taskfile Access


Garet,

You are wasting electons, the interface is gone and the API to the
transport is wrecked. I will need to compose a loadable module to renable
the support. Clearly 2.5/2.6 is not friendly with the needs of the
industry and it will never be at this rate.

In the end, I will end up writing a closed ATA binary driver for sale as a
replacement. I have had several requests to consider the option. As much
as I do not like the idea, it is less offensive than the current
direction.

Andre Hedrick
LAD Storage Consulting Group


On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Garet Cammer wrote:

> For some time now we have been writing user applications that send ATAPI commands to the IDE bus to initialize and configure our hardware RAID 1 controllers. This has been working well, thanks to Andre's patch that gave us taskfile access through the ioctl API. We were counting on it to be a permanent part of the 2.5/2.6 kernel, since there is a lot of hardware in the field using these apps.
> Imagine our surprise when we discovered that taskfile access was being abandoned completely!
> Although we understand that the kernel may need to filter some commands, why can't applications access at least the Smart commands? Help!
> Regards,
> Garet Cammer
> Software Development
> Arco Computer Products
> (954) 925-2688
>


Subject: Re: Need IDE Taskfile Access


Do not worry Garet, I will reimplement it later in 2.5.
I need some free time to do it, (maybe next month?).

On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Andre Hedrick wrote:

>
> Garet,
>
> You are wasting electons, the interface is gone and the API to the
> transport is wrecked. I will need to compose a loadable module to renable
> the support. Clearly 2.5/2.6 is not friendly with the needs of the
> industry and it will never be at this rate.

Will be...

>
> In the end, I will end up writing a closed ATA binary driver for sale as a
> replacement. I have had several requests to consider the option. As much
> as I do not like the idea, it is less offensive than the current
> direction.

Ugh, please dont...

>
> Andre Hedrick
> LAD Storage Consulting Group
>
>
> On Tue, 18 Jun 2002, Garet Cammer wrote:
>
> > For some time now we have been writing user applications that send ATAPI commands to the IDE bus to initialize and configure our hardware RAID 1 controllers. This has been working well, thanks to Andre's patch that gave us taskfile access through the ioctl API. We were counting on it to be a permanent part of the 2.5/2.6 kernel, since there is a lot of hardware in the field using these apps.
> > Imagine our surprise when we discovered that taskfile access was being abandoned completely!
> > Although we understand that the kernel may need to filter some commands, why can't applications access at least the Smart commands? Help!
> > Regards,
> > Garet Cammer
> > Software Development
> > Arco Computer Products
> > (954) 925-2688
> >
>
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to [email protected]
> More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>

2002-06-21 23:24:19

by Alan

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Need IDE Taskfile Access

> Imagine our surprise when we discovered that taskfile access was being abandoned completely!
> Although we understand that the kernel may need to filter some commands, why can't applications access at least the Smart commands? Help!
> Regards,
> Garet Cammer
> Software Development
> Arco Computer Products
> > (954) 925-2688
>

The 2.5 code is rather in flux, various things are changing including
redoing generalised ide/scsi generic command access to be a lot more
consistent that ioctl back doors.

I wouldnt worry about it just yet