Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!rochester!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!uunet!munnari!basser!steve
From: steve@basser.oz (Stephen Russell)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Block special file sizes
Message-ID: <1330@basser.oz>
Date: 23 Jul 88 01:01:46 GMT
References: <3424@louie.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: steve@basser.oz (Stephen Russell)
Organization: Dept of Comp Sci, Uni of Sydney, Australia
Lines: 21

In article <3424@louie.udel.EDU> Leisner.Henr@xerox.com (marty) writes:
>Essentially I patched  fs to issue read/write requests to the device driver and
>let it fail instead of detetecting seek offsets with respect to block special
>sizes (which I'm not sure how fs got them in the first place).

From the incore inode for a /dev/* file.

>I'm not convinced the problem has been resolved to my satisfaction.  I'll see
>what Andy's doing in 1.3.
>I agree the sizes on block special devices aren't very useful (and if anything
>seemed to cause problems).

>marty

Agreed. The drivers know the size of the device, because it is hardcoded.
Alternatively, they could work it out from info in the superblock. The best
solution would be to add device request messages that allow FS to interrogate
the device about its size.


steve