Re: /proc/ide/hd?/settings obsolete in 2.6.

[Wakko Warner <wakko@animx.eu.org>]

Alan Cox wrote:
> > As stated in my last email, I am using EDD.  I only need the legacy heads
> > and sectors.  I can figure out the cylinders by that and the size of the
> > disk.
> 
> Which legacy size do you want though - the partition label, the disks
> opinion this week or the CMOS. They can all be different. Linux used to
> play "guess roughly what Windows might guess".

I think what I wanted got burried in a small geometry war.

> > I have some utils (mkdosfs comes to mind) that do not let the user specify
> > heads/sectors/cyls (it doesn't use cyl actually).
> 
> Presumably they need to follow the MS sequence of guesses then, even on
> non PC systems ? So partition table, cmos, drive in that order if I
> remember rightly.

Not the initial problem.

Let me try to state what I originally wanted.

I am currently using edd to get the legacy heads and sectors then using that
and the size of the disk, I deduce the cylinders.  Works great, no problems.
fdisk will let me specify and it works great.  Ok, so I can do this guessing
game just fine.

Now, i have programs that I can't tell it the geometry (which it does use
and requires to be correct.  My guesses using edd are correct).  I was using
/proc/ide/hdX/settings to tell the kernel what geometry I want so the
programs that can only ask the kernel can get it right.

2.6.12-rc2.  Works great.  But what's this?  it's obsolete?  Ok, it's
obsolete, what is the non-obsolete way of SETTING the geometry.  I looked at
ide.c and there's no HDSETGEO.  I considered writing this myself or
unobsolete the /proc interface for my kernels, but if there's a "right" way
of doing this, I'd rather do it.

If the "right" way is via IOCTL, my scripts are written in perl that do the
bulk of the guess work.

I did not want this to be a geometry flame war.  I realize linux doesn't
give a flying whatever about the geometry (only the number of sectors).  The
systems I'm doing this with run OSs other than linux and they do care (i
wish they didn't!)  I wasn't asking this for someone to tell me I didn't
need it.

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