Charles M. Hannum writes:
> 
> 
>    Sending arbitrary CDB's from the command line is handy.  I'm not
>    sure what is so "*suck*"y about the interface; I guess Charles has
>    used it and found it a pain in the neck that everything within the
>    quotes is in hex and everything outside in decimal.
> 
> No; that's the least of the problems.  The most annoying problem is
> that, e.g/, a trivial typo can turn a CHANGE DEFINITION command into a
> FORMAT UNIT command -- definitely not what the user intended, and by
> the time he/she notices, it's way too late.
> 
> This is a very unsafe interface, and I would definitely not want
> random users to experiment with it.

I agree.  This is not a general disk formatting utility.  Furthermore,
it is a *sucky* interface to a disk formatting utility.

I'm sure Charles meant that this was a sucky interface for a disk
formatting utility, and not that it is a sucky interface for a
general "send an arbitrary CDB" to a SCSI device.  I took it to
be the second.  I know Charles monitors the FreeBSD lists, and
I assumed he knew what the utility was for.

A reading of Charles's posting shows it combines sarcasm ("careful
readers will notice") with strong criticism ("*sucky*") and that
my response showed me to be thin skinned and petulant.  So I think
I'm right about some parts of that last post.

Anyway, 'nough said.

Peter

-- 
Peter Dufault               Real Time Machine Control and Simulation
HD Associates, Inc.         Voice: 508 433 6936
dufault@hda.com             Fax:   508 433 5267