When I had a removable (actually external) SCSI drive on my IDE system,
I just rmmod'ed the SCSI support, and insmod'ed it back, to force the kernel
to re-probe for disks. I suppose that if I had a SCSI system, I could
similarly rmmod and insmod back the IDE subsystem to force re-probe;
however, since I boot on IDE, this is not an option. So I need some way
to reconfigure IDE without rebooting; maybe a new option to hdparm
(or maybe a rewrite of hdparm with a more consistent design of command-line
invocation). It would also be nice to be able to _atomically_ flush all
buffers for a drive and its partitions, stop the drive, wait for the drive
to be done, and return to the user; in case some partition is mounted, the
program would give an error, or only warning if forced; it would autodetect
(and flush) partitions, rather than try to deduce them through a lot
of non-reliable userland grepping through the output of fdisk -l.
So, what's the Right Thing(tm) to do?
Does what I am looking for already exist?
If not, what programs/drivers/foo should be hacked?
PS: with racks come the want of being able to have a linux disk that be
bootable independently from its IDE *and* BIOS numbers. I see no way
to nicely satisfy _both_ constraints in the way things are done currently.
Being BIOS independent would mean some enhancements to LILO.
Being IDE independent would mean being able to mount paritions by
logical internal ID numbers rather than by physical disk settings.
PPS: IDE racks are truly a great way to manage personal computer storage;
it's much cheaper, faster, and bigger storage than anything like ZIP or JAZ
or FOO, and it scales identically with hard disk technology. So you can have
16GB to 35GB of removable storage, and more as harddisks get better, without
having to purchase a new reader. The rack itself is under $15. You also get
cheap random-access backup of your data; actually, the backup process takes 0
second, if, like me, you just get a new disk when the old one is full, and
keep the old one as "backup". Racks also allow you to easily exchange disks
with friends, service disks on new computers; upgrade your computer and keep
the same disk, etc.
PPPS: I know such things are not "recommended". But they work, and make
life easier, so why not use them?
P^4S: hotplug/hotunplug support could be a great addition to the Linux
software RAID drivers... "Using Linux, transform inexpensive vanilla
hardware into reliable RAID arrays that you can service without rebooting".
THAT would be a great slogan!
[ "Faré" | VN: Уng-Vû Bân | Join the TUNES project! http://www.tunes.org/ ]
[ FR: François-René Rideau | TUNES is a Useful, Nevertheless Expedient System ]
[ Reflection&Cybernethics | Project for a Free Reflective Computing System ]
No matter what language you use, a Cunning Compiler(TM) will be able to find
an efficient implementation for whatever apparently difficult problem you
specify. However, a Cunning Compiler(TM) is itself an AI-complete problem.
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/