Re: RFC: ACPI/scsi/libata integration and hotswap

[Matthew Garrett]

On Fri, Dec 09, 2005 at 06:58:41AM -0500, Jeff Garzik wrote:

> If this is for hotswap, as I noted, libata doesn't need this at all.
> 
> If the hardware supports it, then libata will support it directly. 
> There is no ACPI-specific magic, because ACPI does nothing but talk to 
> the same hardware libata is talking to.

If libata knows how to talk to the random hardware attached to a Dell 
laptop hotswap bay, I'll be amazed. Ejecting the drive generates a 
system management interrupt, which then causes the ACPI code to check a 
register in a block of machine-specific registers and generate an ACPI 
notification. As far as I can tell, the controller has no say in the 
matter at all - the Intel specs seem to suggest that ICH6 doesn't 
generate a hotswap interrupt unless you're using AHCI (which this 
hardware doesn't).

So, as far as I can tell, there /is/ ACPI-specific magic on 
current-generation hardware. If we're lucky, they'll move to AHCI in 
future and implement things properly there - but I wouldn't count on it.

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
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