> > My understanding is that the kernel will automagically configure DMA > > as appropriate if you build support for the IDE controller statically, > > but hdparm is needed to initialize DMA stuff if you build your IDE > > controller's driver as a module. I'm not certain though. I tend to build > > everything into the kernel, and I've not needed to use hdparm. > > There's a whole lot more one can do with hdparm. What the kernel _can_ do > is enable dma only. hdparm is used to set other performance enhancing > options. My '/etc/conf.d/hdparm' contains 'hda_args="-d1A1m16u1a64"' which > means: > > -d1 - enables dma for this drive (to ensure dma is set). > -A1 - enables the IDE drive's read-lookahead feature. > -m1 - set sector count to 16. This reads 16 sectors per interrupt instead > of one. Some drives run slower with this. > -u1 - set interrupt-unmask for the drive. Can be dangerous with some > drive/controller combinations. Allows the kernel to service other i/o > interrupts, afaicu. > -a64 - set sector count for filesystem read-ahead to 64 sectors. A > cache-mechanism.
Thanks Peter. Is your "-u1" a typo? - Grant -- gentoo-user@gentoo.org mailing list
