9fans archive / 1999 / 01 / 8 /    prev next

From: Eric Dorman edorman@tan...
Subject: [9fans] fileserver to PC port???
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 09:26:31 -0800

On Sun, Jan 10, 1999 at 09:13:21AM +0000, forsyth@cal... wrote:
> >>i would be interested in a 9fs for ide disks. all my scsi disks are internal
> 
> years ago for someone else i did a quick version of 9pcfs
> that supported IDE discs.  i can't find the changes,
> which implemented the file server's scsi
> interface to a modified devata.c.

I have such a beast; it works but doesn't take advantage of the more 
'esoteric' DMA and PIO options.  If the original poster is still 
interested he can email me directly and I can send a diff.  Note
that it won't fileserve out of partitions, but uses an entire disk just
like the scsi implementation.  I've used it on 2 disks stacked together
as a single striped filesystem, and should work with 4 disks.

The PC ide interface is unnecessarily complicated with much legacy cruft.
Adding more PIO and DMA flexibility would not be difficult but
exceedingly tedious (see freebsd WD driver: yuk!)  .  IMO scsi is a 
better win for FS's even for small #s of disk units, if only from an
ease of implementation standpoint.

Eric Dorman
edorman@ucs...