Kernel Traffic #313 For 5�Jun�2005

ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/akpm/patches/2.6/2.6.12-rc4/2.6.12-rc4-mm2/

• davem has set up a mm-commits mailing list so people can review things which are added to or removed from the -mm tree. Do

  echo subscribe mm-commits | mail [email protected]

• x86_64 architecture update from Andi.
• Everything up to and including `spurious-interrupt-fix.patch' is planned for 2.6.12 merging. Plus a few other things in there.
• Another DVB subsystem update

sdparm is a command line utility designed to get and set SCSI disk parameters (cf hdparm for ATA disks). More generally it gets and sets mode page information on SCSI devices or devices that use a SCSI command set (e.g. CD/DVD drives (any transport) and SCSI tape drives). It also can list VPD pages including the device identification page.

For more information and downloads (tarball, rpm and deb packages) see: http://www.torque.net/sg/sdparm.html

There are now more than 150 parameters accessed by sdparm. Thanks to Kai Makisara for interface and sanity checking suggestions.

ChangeLog for sdparm-0.92 [20050520]

• add data compression and device configuration mode pages (ssc3)
• add timeout + protect plus write parameters mode pages (mmc5)
• add XOR control mode page (sbc2)
• add SES management mode page (ses2)
• discriminate mode pages based on device's peripheral device type
• disallow set/clear acronyms whose pdt doesn't match current device
• with option "-ll" decode more of INQUIRY standard response
• improve error checking when getting non-existent fields
• use double fetch technique when fetching mode pages
• add RBC device parameters mode page (rbc)
• add '--flexible' option for mode sense 6/10 response mixup
• '--inquiry -all' now outputs supported VPD pages page

dmraid 1.0.0.rc8 is available at http://people.redhat.com:/heinzm/sw/dmraid/ in source tarball, source rpm and i386 rpm (with shared and static dietlibc binary).

This release fixes a stripe size bug in NVidia and avoids using the Silicon Image incarnation number for RAID name creation (should avoid some sets not grouping properly). It adds an '--ignorelocking' in order to allow dmraid to run in early boot where no read/write access to /var is given.

dmraid (Device-Mapper RAID tool) discovers, [de]activates and displays properties of software RAID sets (i.e. ATARAID) and contained DOS partitions using the device-mapper runtime of the 2.6 kernel.

The following ATARAID types are supported on Linux 2.6:

Highpoint HPT37X
Highpoint HPT45X
Intel Software RAID
LSI Logic MegaRAID
NVidia NForce
Promise FastTrack
Silicon Image Medley
VIA Software RAID

Please provide insight to support those metadata formats completely.

I'm about to submit a new sub-architecture under arch/cris and I would like to get your input on how this is best done. I can see at least 3 alternatives:

1. All the patches goes to LKML. Lots of boring patches that most people doesn't care about.
2. Send drivers to the driver subsystems maintainers for review and then a big .tgz to Andrew.
3. Send the .tgz directly to Andrew without reviews from the driver guys.

I leaning towards option 2, comments?

Except from the new sub-architecture there will also be patches to the generic cris parts to add support for e.g. SMP and to convert to the new IRQ framework.