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Date:      Thu, 22 Apr 1999 00:22:14 -0400 (EDT)
From:      "Crist J. Clark" <cjc@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
To:        dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu (Doug White)
Cc:        cjclark@home.com, danderso@crystalsugar.com, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Using Raw wd
Message-ID:  <199904220422.AAA14618@cc942873-a.ewndsr1.nj.home.com>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.03.9904211110460.27954-100000@resnet.uoregon.edu> from Doug White at "Apr 21, 99 11:13:55 am"

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Doug White wrote,
> A hard disk has variable geometry and partition information in the
> disklabel that is specific to the disk & slice.  You'd have to regenerate
> the disklabel as you were writing the chunk.  The ?d driver does not do
> the fixups necessary for this access mode to work correctly.

Why can I do this with a SCSI disk, which in some sense, has an even
more 'variable geometry?' I've read/written to Jaz drives (/dev/sd0)
as raw devices with no ill effects. Isn't one of the most powerful
aspects of UNIX flavored operating systems that devices are in some
sense treated just like files? Or that most operations are transparent
with respect to the hardware underneath? It'd be nice to be able to,

$ tar cf /dev/st0 something/
$ tar cf /dev/fd0 something/
$ tar cf /dev/sd0 something/
$ tar cf /dev/wd0s4 something/

> In sum: don't do that :)

*sigh*

I've checked the disklabel on the slice and given /dev/wd0s4c a shot
to and more Very Bad Things. I guess I'll have to put a filesystem on
the partition.
-- 
Crist J. Clark                           cjclark@home.com


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