Re: Removeable Media, partitions and devfs?

[Paul Bristow <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi again Kevin,

Kevin P. Fleming wrote:

> Side note: the propery way to fix this (IMHO) is to implement Media Status
> Notification in the ide-floppy driver, so that the driver will be aware when
> the user inserts and removes media from the device. This, however, will not
> be practical (although possibly) until Andre's new IDE drivers get merged
> into the kernel, since they provide clean and simple taskfile support (and
> Media Status Notification requires using ATA, not ATAPI, commands, which are
> hard to handle with the current ide driver subsystem).  


2.5 stuff...  It will come.  We just need to get the drive to tell us if 
a disk is there.  Not that that helps with the thing the users are 
complaining about.


> In the meantime, I have already forwarded patches to Richard to do exactly
> what you have suggested (create/remove the "disc" entries regardless of
> whether media is present). With those entries available, it would be a
> simple matter to issue a revalidate IOCTL from userspace when appropriate
> (just before you make a mount attempt). 


Automatically with devfsd?  Or would we need another user-space prog?

> Note that my patches also address
> other issues, like when you change media and the old partX entries don't
> disappear properly (not as big a problem, granted, but still worth fixing).


Yes.  I searched for days trying to find a way round this, but it just 
can't be done, short of brute force.  Is there a devfs_rm_dir() or 
devfs_rm_symlink around?
Trust me.  I get lots of complaints about this.

So this stuff exists somewhere?  Are these patches for devfs or 
ide-floppy or both?

In the meantime, I'll just put the mknod workaround on my web page in 
the FAQ section...

Don't you just hate it when you can't fix it *properly*. :-(

Cheers,

--

Paul

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