1SD(4) Linux Programmer's Manual SD(4)
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6 sd - Driver for SCSI Disk Drives
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9 #include <linux/hdreg.h> /* for HDIO_GETGEO */
10 #include <linux/fs.h> /* for BLKGETSIZE and BLKRRPART */
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13 The block device name has the following form: sdlp, where l is a letter
14 denoting the physical drive, and p is a number denoting the partition
15 on that physical drive. Often, the partition number, p, will be left
16 off when the device corresponds to the whole drive.
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18 SCSI disks have a major device number of 8, and a minor device number
19 of the form (16 * drive_number) + partition_number, where drive_number
20 is the number of the physical drive in order of detection, and parti‐
21 tion_number is as follows:
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23 partition 0 is the whole drive
24 partitions 1-4 are the DOS "primary" partitions
25 partitions 5-8 are the DOS "extended" (or "logical") partitions
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27 For example, /dev/sda will have major 8, minor 0, and will refer to all
28 of the first SCSI drive in the system; and /dev/sdb3 will have major 8,
29 minor 19, and will refer to the third DOS "primary" partition on the
30 second SCSI drive in the system.
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32 At this time, only block devices are provided. Raw devices have not
33 yet been implemented.
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36 The following ioctls are provided:
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38 HDIO_GETGEO
39 Returns the BIOS disk parameters in the following structure:
40 struct hd_geometry {
41 unsigned char heads;
42 unsigned char sectors;
43 unsigned short cylinders;
44 unsigned long start;
45 };
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47 A pointer to this structure is passed as the ioctl(2) parameter.
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49 The information returned in the parameter is the disk geometry
50 of the drive as understood by DOS! This geometry is not the
51 physical geometry of the drive. It is used when constructing
52 the drive's partition table, however, and is needed for conve‐
53 nient operation of fdisk(1), efdisk(1), and lilo(1). If the
54 geometry information is not available, zero will be returned for
55 all of the parameters.
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57 BLKGETSIZE
58 Returns the device size in sectors. The ioctl(2) parameter
59 should be a pointer to a long.
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61 BLKRRPART
62 Forces a re-read of the SCSI disk partition tables. No parame‐
63 ter is needed.
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65 The scsi(4) ioctl(2) operations are also supported. If the
66 ioctl() parameter is required, and it is NULL, then ioctl() will
67 return -EINVAL.
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70 /dev/sd[a-h]: the whole device
71 /dev/sd[a-h][0-8]: individual block partitions
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75 1992-12-17 SD(4)