

SD(4)                     Minix Programmer's Manual                      SD(4)


NAME
     sd, st, sg - SCSI hard disk / tape / generic

DESCRIPTION
     The sd*, st*, sg* family of devices refer to the SCSI hard disk, tape and
     generic driver using the Adaptec 154x series of controllers.  This manual
     page only describes the differences between the sd and hd  devices,  read
     hd(4) first.

     The devices numbers of the SCSI devices are statically  mapped  onto  the
     SCSI  targets  0  to  7.   This  is done like the hd devices with sd[0-4]
     referring to target 0, sd[5-9] to target 1, etc.  The logical unit number
     is  always  0,  because  devices  with  more  than  one  logical unit are
     virtually extinct.  The mapping may be changed from the boot  environment
     however (see boot(8)).

     Tapes start at minor device 64, with nrst0 at minor 64, rst0 at 65, nrst1
     at 66, etc.  The mapping is again static to target (minor - 64) / 2.  The
     rst devices rewind the tape on close,  the  nrst  devices  do  not.   See
     mt(1),  and mtio(4) for a description of the commands that may be sent to
     the tape, either from the command prompt or from a program.

     Through the eight raw generic devices rsg[0-7] starting at minor 120, one
     can  send  SCSI  commands  to any SCSI device from user mode.  (Minix-vmd
     only.)

     The driver returns a drive geometry of 64 heads by 32 sectors  per  track
     for  small  disks  with  the  DIOCGETP  ioctl.  For large disks 255x63 is
     returned.  The size  in  sectors  is  usually  larger  than  the  largest
     cylinder  number  indicates,  because  the  disk is not likely to exactly
     match that faked geometry.  Note that DOS may not be able to access those
     last few sectors.

  Disk like devices.
     Removable disks (floppies), CD-ROM's and WORM disks may also be  accessed
     through the sd devices.  One is not allowed to write a WORM disk however,
     because it is likely to be taken from an alien operating  system,  so  it
     seems  safer  to  not  allow  Minix  to stomp over it.  One usually needs
     special O.S. support to keep one from writing to the same block twice.

     The DIOCEJECT ioctl ejects CD-ROMs, floppies, etc.   (See  eject(1).)   A
     fixed disk spins down if it supports the stop command.

  SCSI Tapes
     There are two types of SCSI tapes drives supported by the  driver:  fixed
     or  variable  block  size  tape  drives.   Examples of the first kind are
     cartridge tapes, with a fixed 512 bytes  block  size.   An  Exabyte  tape
     drive  has  a variable block size, with a minimum of 1 byte and a maximum
     of 245760 bytes (see the documentation of such devices.)  The maximum  is
     truncated  to  32767  bytes  for  Minix-86 and 61440 bytes for Minix-vmd,


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SD(4)                     Minix Programmer's Manual                      SD(4)


     because the driver can't move more bytes in a single request.

     A read or write to a fixed block size tape must be a precise multiple  of
     the  block  size,  any other count gives results in an I/O error.  A read
     from a variable block sized tape must be large enough to accept the block
     that  is  read,  otherwise an I/O error will be returned.  A write can be
     any size above the minimum, creating a block of that size.  If the  write
     count  is larger than the maximum block size then more blocks are written
     until the count becomes zero.  The last block must  be  larger  than  the
     minimum of course.  (This minimum is often as small as 1 byte, as for the
     Exabyte.)

     The mt blksize command may be used to select a fixed  block  size  for  a
     variable block sized tape.  This will speed up I/O considerably for small
     block sizes.  (Some systems can only use fixed mode  and  will  write  an
     Exabyte  tape  with  1024  byte  blocks, which read very slow in variable
     mode.)

     A tape is a sequence of blocks and filemarks.  A tape may be  opened  and
     blocks  may be read from it upto a filemark, after that all further reads
     return 0.  After the tape is closed and reopened one can read the  blocks
     following  the  filemark if using a non-rewinding device.  This makes the
     tape look like a sequence of files.

     If a tape has been written to  or  opened  in  write-only  mode,  then  a
     filemark  is  written  if  the  tape  is  closed or if a space command is
     issued.  No extra filemark is written if the drive is instructed to write
     filemarks.

  Raw Generic Devices
     Under Minix-vmd one can use the generic SCSI devices to  program  a  SCSI
     device  entirely  from  user  mode.   The disk and tape devices probe for
     devices when opened, start disks and load tapes, but the generic  devices
     do  nothing of this.  Given an open file descriptor to any SCSI character
     device (not just the generic devices) one can use the following ioctl:

          ioctl(fd, SCIOCCMD, &scsicmd)

     The structure whose address is passed as the third argument is defined in
     <sys/scsi.h> as follows:

          struct scsicmd {
                  void    *cmd;
                  size_t  cmdlen;
                  void    *buf;
                  size_t  buflen;
                  void    *sense;
                  size_t  senselen;
                  int     dir;
          };


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SD(4)                     Minix Programmer's Manual                      SD(4)


     Cmd and cmdlen hold the address and length of an object holding a Group 0
     or  Group  1  SCSI  command.  The next two fields describe a buffer of at
     most 8 kilobytes used in the data in or out phase.  Dir is 0 if  data  is
     to  be  read from the device, 1 if data is written to the device.  If the
     ioctl succeeds then 0 is returned, otherwise -1 with errno set to EIO and
     the  request sense info returned in the buffer described by the sense and
     senselen fields.  If the sense key is zero on error then a  host  adapter
     error  occurred,  this means that the device is most likely turned off or
     not present.

FILES

     /dev/sd[0-9], /dev/sd[1-46-9][a-d]      Usual disk devices.

     /dev/rst4, /dev/nrst4                   Usual tape device.

     /dev/rsg[0-7]                           Raw generic devices.

SEE ALSO
     hd(4), mt(1), eject(1), mtio(4), dd(1).

AUTHOR
     Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)





























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