On August 14, 2023 11:31:36 PM UTC, Finn Thain <fthain@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mon, 14 Aug 2023, Richard Z wrote:
Well ideally it would be a per-device option. This would help the ide SD
cards greatly and people could byte swap their devices one at a time.
Would a byte-swapping IDE cable help, e.g. if the same flash memory card
was moved from an IDE interface to a SCSI interface (on the same Q40)?
The Q40 doesn't have SCSI. The only issue is exchanging devices with other computers.
Byteswapping cable would help the performance but will also swap the ide ident string so the kernel must take that into account.
Perhaps we should not worry too much about unusual use-cases during what
would be a temporary transition period...
You are right, there are sure many other ways to solve the issue with SD cards.
Think of it, if you want to boot an older kernel you don't want to
byteswap your whole hard disk back and forth every time when testing an
older or newer kernel.
Probably not an issue for end-users, as they are more likely to boot an
old userland together with an old kernel. But potentially an issue for
kernel developers who need to mix new kernels with old userland. However,
kernel developers can use out-of-tree code to help with their testing, as
usual.
Just don't think this transition is worth it if it will make everything more complicated and noticeably slower.
Richard
