raw device property

[Kay Sievers]

On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 11:25:05AM -0800, Artem Kachitchkine wrote:
> >That sounds fine, but Linux does not have raw devices. How do we
> >add Solaris specific properties to the spec, btw?
> 
> For Solaris-specific properties there will be solaris.* namespace. 
> However, this is not a case of an OS-specific property - OSes other that 
> Solaris have raw devices, and Linux might have raw devices some day. In 
> fact, I found this:
> 
> http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man8/raw.8.html

No, there are still raw devices, if you want, but they are not common
and scheduled for removal from the kernel. On Linux you just pass O_DIRECT
to the open() call of the normal node and the filehandle will just act
like a raw device.

> What I'm proposing is that "block.raw_device" be an *optional*, not 
> mandatory, property. If the system supports and/or configured with raw 
> devices, HAL can create this property; otherwise, it doesn't have to.
> 
> As I said, the way this can be handled in a portable application is to 
> check for "block.raw_device" first, and fall back to "block.device" is 
> the former does not exist.

Sounds fine, sure.

Kay