On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 12:50 -0600, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 01:44:38PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote: > > On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 12:42 -0600, Matthew Wilcox wrote: > > > On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 01:37:25PM -0500, James Bottomley wrote: > > > > scsi_debug does exactly the same thing, so it reports anything you tell > > > > it (Martin Petersen actually added this so he could test with 4k > > > > sectors). > > > > > > > > The problem, which ata_ram also suffers, is that the tools we most need > > > > to test are the ones for manipulating non volatile characteristics (like > > > > partition tables). We'd really like the disk contents to survive reboot > > > > for this ... > > > > > > Ummm... _reboot_, or _module unload/reload_? I could certainly include > > > an option to populate the ramdisc from a file. Is the ioctl to re-read > > > the partition table not enough? > > > > reboot ... we'd like to take the tools through shutdown restart testing > > to make sure they're all working ... of course, then there's the > > bios ... > > It's not up to us to fix the BIOS. > > Since the vast majority of users use a distro, and the vast majority of > distros use a fully modular kernel, wouldn't initialising the contents > of ata-ram from the initrd/initramfs solve the problem? Well ... we'd really like it file backed to truly verify ... sort of like scsi_debug on a loopback. But saving on shutdown and reinitialising from the saved image on boot would likely be perfect. James -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-ide" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
