Currently NetBSD has three programming interfaces to determine
disk geometry from userland.
- ioctl DIOCGDINFO. The traditional interface, limited to 32bit
numbers or disks < 2TB because its data structure corresponds
to the binary on-disk structure.
- the "get-properties" command to the drvctl(4) driver. drvctl(4)
is missing on some ports and some disk drivers don't make
geometry properties available.
- ioctl DIOCGWEDGEINFO. Works only for wedges but not for the
disk drivers themselves. This is fine for operations on
data blocks of a wedge but doesn't help e.g. partitioning
tools. It also does not provide the sector size.
To solve this, we could
- create a new DIOCGDINFO version that uses larger numbers. AFAIK
that is about what OpenBSD does. The on-disk structure could be
translated but writing a label might be incompatible if partitions
are defined beyond the 2TB limit.
- make drvctl(4) mandatory and make all disk drivers provide
geometry properties.
- make DIOCGWEDGEINFO available for the disk drivers and
ignore wedge-related information.
- import FreeBSD DIOCGMEDIASIZE (and DIOCGSECTORSIZE) ioctls.
Comments?
--
Michael van Elst
Internet: mlel...@serpens.de
"A potential Snark may lurk in every tree."
