Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 14 Feb 2001 09:19:46 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 14 Feb 2001 09:19:36 -0500 Received: from smtp7.us.dell.com ([143.166.224.233]:30990 "EHLO smtp7.us.dell.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 14 Feb 2001 09:19:25 -0500 Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2001 08:19:22 -0600 (CST) From: Michael E Brown Reply-To: Michael E Brown To: cc: , Subject: Re: block ioctl to read/write last sector In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 14 Feb 2001 Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl wrote: > But it changes the idea of odd and even. > A partition can start on an odd sector. > That is orthogonal to the issue that I am trying to solve with my patch. My code is trying to make it possible to access sectors at the _end_ of the disk that you cannot access any other way. Example: Disk with 1001 blocks. Hardware 512-byte sector size. The block layer uses 1024-byte soft blocksize. This means that, at the _end_ of the disk there is a single sector that represents half of a software sector. The block layer will not normally let you read or write that sector because it is not a full sector. Another example: Disk with 7 blocks (very small disk :-). Hardware blocksize=512, Block layer uses 4096-byte blocksize. Now you have _three_ hardware blocks at the end of the disk that the block layer will not let you read or write. My patch allows an alternate method to access these sectors. My patch has nothing to do with partitioning. -- Michael Brown Linux Systems Group Dell Computer Corp - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/