Re: write alignment matters?

[der Mouse <mouse%Rodents-Montreal.ORG@localhost>]

>> That "what it is reasonable for a disk to do" consensus *is* the
>> interface spec I was talking about, not the de-jure non-spec of "you
>> get whatever the device (via its driver) feels like giving you".

> That's sort of the point.  If you want "what it is reasonable for a
> disk to do" you should be using the block device [...].

> The raw device is supposed to be just that: a raw interface to the
> device.  It gives you access to all the mis-behavior of the device
> with all its gory niggling little details.

That's a nice theory.  But it's not the historical practice.

Typically raw device drivers do a nontrivial amount of cleaning up of
the hardware's interface, such as dealing with bounce buffers and
poking device registers.

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