Bug 208738 – Please take into account new libata drivers for 2008.0

• Product: [OLD] Docs on www.gentoo.org
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Christian Faulhammer (RETIRED) 2008-02-03 13:16:30 UTC]

For some kernel revisions there is the new libata driver available.  This new framework supports SATA and PATA likewise, but all drives are named /dev/sd*, which makes some explanations obsolete in the Handbook.
For example when explaining block devices, /dev/sd* is only referred for SATA and SCSI disks, the same for Grub and fstab.

[Comment 1 nm (RETIRED) 2008-02-03 23:33:47 UTC]

. .  . except that not everyone uses the new libata for all block devices. I have found that it's quite honestly extremely crappy for my IDE drives on all three of my machines, so I use the older subsystem for IDE drives.

I don't think we should unequivocally recommend the new libata system yet, especially as it's still marked as experimental. Also, if not everyone has it available in their kernels yet, it's a maintenance headache to only keep track of it for some arches and not others. We've been trying to move away from some headaches. :)

[Comment 2 Jan Kundrát (RETIRED) 2008-02-03 23:37:30 UTC]

It is reasonable to expect that libata might become the new default in near future. I guess that having a note explaining that users running libata access their disks through the /dev/sd* nodes doesn't hurt.

[Comment 3 Xavier Neys (RETIRED) 2008-02-04 07:23:01 UTC]

IMO, Christian did not ask us to recommend libata, but to adjust the the text that says hd*==IDE and sd*==SCSI/SATA which is not true anymore.

[Comment 4 Christian Faulhammer (RETIRED) 2008-02-04 08:17:09 UTC]

(In reply to comment #3)
> IMO, Christian did not ask us to recommend libata, but to adjust the the text
> that says hd*==IDE and sd*==SCSI/SATA which is not true anymore.

 Correct.

[Comment 5 nm (RETIRED) 2008-03-01 07:23:34 UTC]

Fixed in CVS. Will be there for the 2008.0 handbooks.