Message-ID: <3F1ECFDD.D561D861@integrinautics.com>
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 11:11:41 -0700
From: Dave Lawrence <dgl@integrinautics.com>
Organization: IntegriNautics Corporation
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: compact flash IDE hot-swap summary please
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org
Content-Length: 4122
Lines: 110

I have read through some old threads on this mailing
list and am confused about what is and isn't supported
by Linux in the area of removable IDE devices.  I
apologize in advance for my ignorance, but I think there
are others nearly as ignorant as I that could benefit
from answers to these questions.

I have a Zaurus handheld that runs Linux that seems 
to be able to hot-swap its IDE compact flash device
with no problems.  But I've read in a recent
thread "hdparm and removable IDE?" that hot-swap
isn't "fully" supported and that is won't be
until:

>2.7 at the earliest, and only if there is a general buy in about such a
>change to the init handling. Similarly the big issues with hdparm -U and
>-R are the same as with hotplug races, and will take a lot more than
>quick hacks to fix.
>
>Alan Cox

How come my Zaurus hot-swaps fine (or does it have
intermittent problems that I've just never seen?)?


I have a single board computer with one IDE connector
that has two compact flash (one master (hda), one slave (hdb))
IDE devices connected to the one cable.  Is it possible in
Linux now to (safely) remove the slave compact flash
device after unmounting all partitions on that device?
If not, will it ever be possible (or is there a hardware
limitation that precludes doing this?)?

Is it possible in Linux now to (safely) remove the slave 
compact flash without unmounting the partitions (assuming
you're using a file system like ext3 that is robust to
shutdowns)?

If not, will this ever be supported (and when?) or is there a 
hardware limitation that precludes it?

How about if the compact flash device is in a SanDisk
USB card reader or a Lexar Jumpshot USB card reader?
Is hot-swapping of such media supported today without
unmounting the partitions?  If not, will it ever be?


Also, there were two related threads in January/February of
2002 that discussed the removability of compact flash:

false positives on disk change checks 
PROBLEM: ext2/mount - multiple mounts corrupts inodes 

The original problem was that in 2.4 kernels, compact
flash disks are corrupted if you remount already mounted
partitions.  Somebody found a hack workaround for this
problem, which was to remove the following lines of
code from ide-probe.c:

> if (id->config & (1<<7)) 
> drive->removable = 1; 
> +#endif 

However, Andre Hedrick had the following response to
this hack:

>REGARDLESS, it is removable media and this it reports so. 
>The driver will not change to create false reports, because CFA has its 
>own rules, and if you can figure them out great. 
>
>Removable media shall always report as Removable media. 
>
>If you purchase enough of the media, the OEM will allow you to alter the 
>identify page and this it will not longer report "Removable". 
>
>Regards, 
>
>Andre Hedrick 
>Linux Disk Certification Project Linux ATA Development 

It seems like Andre is implying the problem that is
causing my compact flash disk corruption is that the
disk is reporting being removable when it actually
is not.  But what good is it for the disk to be
flagged as removable if hot-swapping isn't supported?
Shouldn't the "hack" solution be put into the kernel
(at least as a configuration option) until the kernel
fully supports removable compact flash (at which time,
one would hope that you could remount compact flash
without disk curruption)?  In 2.2 kernels,
compact flash disks weren't corrupted by remounts - in
2.4 they are.

On a potentially related note (or maybe completely
off-topic), I always get these kernel messages when
using compact flash:
hda: task_no_data_intr: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: task_no_data_intr: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
They don't seem to be related to any real problem.  How do
I make those error messages go away?


Thanks in advance for a "hotswap for dummies" summary.

                               Dave
-
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/