Re: Sending ATA commands?

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

>> Yes and yes.  It simply removes the protection, letting the host see
>> the HPA as what it really is: more space appended to the space
>> advertised to HPA-unaware software.

> I don't really like silently appending the host protected area to the
> unprotected part of the disk.  Exposing something that is supposed to
> be hidden could have unexpected consequences.

I'm not sure I like it either.  It's one reason I said someone might
want to "look at [my code] as a possible basis for something" rather
than suggesting adopting it directly; what I have now is more
proof-of-concept than ready-to-go.

> I think I'd prefer to present the HPA as a separate device (an ld(4)
> device, as others have suggested, would be fine), and add some ioctls
> and atactl commands to query and adjust the sizes of the ordinary and
> HPA parts of the disk.

Sounds like a reasonable interface plan.  I'm not sure how well the
disk infrastructure would deal with a disk changing size, but that's
the only issue I foresee with such a thing - or, at least, the only
issue that wouldn't already come up in doing what's sketched above.

I'll probably have a stab at this, but someone who knows the disk
infrastructure better than I do could probably do a better job.

/~\ The ASCII                             Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML                mouse%rodents-montreal.org@localhost
/ \ Email!           7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B