From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 29 May 2002 14:07:23 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 29 May 2002 14:07:22 -0400 Received: from hera.cwi.nl ([192.16.191.8]:49287 "EHLO hera.cwi.nl") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 29 May 2002 14:07:21 -0400 From: Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl Date: Wed, 29 May 2002 20:07:13 +0200 (MEST) Message-Id: To: dalecki@evision-ventures.com, torvalds@transmeta.com Subject: Re: [PATCH] 2.5.18 IDE 73 Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org - Don't allow check_partition to be more clever then the writer of a driver. It was interfering with drivers which check partitions as they go and finally if we want to spew something about it - we can do it ourself. - Eliminate ide_geninit(). We scan for partitions now inside the recently introduced attach method. register_disk() is broken by the way and 90% of places where it's used it is doing literally nothing. Either some one didn't finish some code or the code is basically just junk from the past. Anyway we grok the partitions now one by one as we detect the channels. Pity you send this gzipped, otherwise I would have looked at the code. Yes, 90% of the uses of register_disk() are empty. I submitted a patch to remove this cruft last year, but Al was attached to it - wanted to make them nonempty. About scanning for partitions I say the same thing I said to Al a few days ago: Several partitioning schemes exist, and reading partition tables is not something a driver should do without getting explicit requests. For all we know the disk contents may be completely random. You should offer the list of disks seen to user space, and user space should decide which disks have to be investigated, and tell the kernel about the partitions it wants to have on these disks. That way all knowledge about partitioning, dynamic disks, disk managers and the like is removed from the kernel, and moved into partx-type code. Andries