Re: IDE/ATAPI in 2.5

Matthew D. Pitts (mpitts@suite224.net)
Sun, 14 Jul 2002 05:16:38 -0400


Paul, et al,

> So to me the problem is not to make everything work as SCSI, because
> that simply isn't true for ide-floppy devices. They *nearly* work, so
> you can get kludgy, "good enough for command line gurus" working with
> ide-scsi, but there are some funnies. Does it really make sense to have
> IDE/ATAPI kludges down in the SCSI tree?

If they arn't SCSI, don't treat them like they are.

> I much prefer Linus's suggestion of agreeing on the top level API. I
> would like to see disks, and removeable media having a single unified
> namespace and set of ioctls so that the different user-space programs
> don't need to worry about if they are dealing with a SCSI, PPA,
> ATAPI-ish, USB, 1394 or whatever comes next drive. Is that work? yes,
> but it's also about communication and keeping things in the appropriate
> place. Let me hide the horrible things ide-floppy has to do from
> user-space, and if that means I/we have to completely re-write the
> ioctls etc so be it.

Amen to this... It is a very definite need. And if I may add my $0.02 US, a
unified IDE/ATA/ATAPI API for Linux will make Linux more likely to take its
place on the desktop. As it stands, I have to fiddle with things more than I
like to to get my CD-RW to work with both CD-R and Packet Writing.

Matthew D. Pitts.

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