Hi all,

for some setups (eg dmraid or multipathing) the in-kernel partition scan
is pointless; the (block) partitions won't be used anywhere. Instead the
system will be using kpartx-generated device-mapper devices.
Worse, on some setups (RAID0 dmraid or active/passive multipath devices)
the in-kernel partition scan will generate plenty of I/O errors as the
partitions table might not be accessible or invalid for this device.

This patch implements a new kernel command-line option 'no_partition_scan'
which will switch off the partition scan globally. The partition scan can
be re-enabled for individual devices by echoing any positive number smaller
than the number of minors into
/sys/class/block/XXX/range

and rescanning the device.

Please apply.

Cheers,

Hannes
-- 
Dr. Hannes Reinecke		      zSeries & Storage
hare@suse.de			      +49 911 74053 688
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg
GF: Markus Rex, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)