On 2/14/07, BandiPat
On Tuesday 13 February 2007, BandiPat wrote:
Question!
I'm a bit confused on the new kernels and hard drives, optical devices. According to what I'm reading, any kernel 2.6.19 or above is now using the new libata module for drives. What this does basically is change all devices that were labeled as hdxx to sdxx designation. Is that correct so far?
Now if you have SATA drives, they are already sdxx designated, so no changes are necessary in Grub or Lilo or /etc/fstab. But, if you have anything labeled with hdxx, those must be changed to sdxx to be recognized? Also, if that is correct, what happens to programs like k3b in seeing the drives?
So let's say I have a dual SATA, not counting the Raid, and those will be sda & sdb, right?
Now I have two optical devices, cdwriter, dvdwriter as hdc & hdd presently, so those become sde & sdf now?
sata=sda sata=sdb hda=sdc hdb=sdd hdc=sde hdd=sdf
Is my logic right or do optical devices not count in the whole scheme of things??
thanks, Lee ======
Sorry, answering my own question after a bit more research, but thought it might be helpful to others getting ready to try the new kernels. From 2.6.19, the kernels are using the new libata device, which changes things around for those people still using IDE/PATA devices in their systems. I guess a "beware" is in order for those that can't wait to try new things.
note: (built with exclusive libata disk subsystem, take care to the new naming if you still use PATA, hard disks will be named sdX , CD/DVD will be seen as srX )
So the above would be correct, if all the devices were hard disks, but not if there were some optical drives in the mix. Hope that helps others moving to the newer kernels.
regards, Lee
I think there is some basic confusion about the vanilla kernel. Libata has been around forever (ie. since sata support started I believe). As of 2.6.19 Libata added "experimental" support for a number of PATA devices using the /dev/sda nomenclature. Distros are still advised to use the traditional ide drivers via /dev/hda. This is not likely to change anytime soon, but I have seen that one specific driver in one specific architecture submitted a patch to change the default to the libata version. FYI: Changing from one set to the other is a basic kernel issue. A specific IDE interface can only be controlled by one driver at a time so you won't have the ability to access it both ways at the same time. I think you can rmmod / insmod to change, but not if it is your root drive. So if you have a non-SUSE distro that has already changed they are really pushing the envelope. I will be surprised if even opensuse 10.3 makes the jump. It is just too soon. Also, when the libata pata drivers get more stable there has been discussion of leaving both /dev/hda and /dev/sda behind. Maybe /dev/disk will be used, but all of that discussion is very preliminary as well. Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org