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DA(4) Device Drivers Manual DA(4)

da — SCSI Direct Access device driver

device da
device da1 at scbus0 target 4 unit 0

The da driver provides support for all SCSI devices of the direct access class that are attached to the system through a supported SCSI Host Adapter. The direct access class includes disk, magneto-optical, and solid-state devices.

A SCSI Host adapter must also be separately configured into the system before a SCSI direct access device can be configured.

The da driver allows the disk to have two levels of partitioning. One layer, called the “slice layer”, is used to separate the DragonFly areas of the disk from areas used by other operating systems. The second layer is the native 4.4BSD partitioning scheme, disklabel(5), which is used to subdivide the DragonFly slices into areas for individual filesystems and swap spaces. For more information, see fdisk(8) and disklabel(8), respectively.

If an uninitialized disk is opened, the slice table will be initialized with a fictitious DragonFly slice spanning the entire disk. Similarly, if an uninitialized (or non-DragonFly) slice is opened, its disklabel will be initialized with parameters returned by the drive and a single ‘c’ partition encompassing the entire slice.

Many direct access devices are equipped with read and/or write caches. Parameters affecting the device's cache are stored in mode page 8, the caching control page. Mode pages can be examined and modified via the camcontrol(8) utility.

The read cache is used to store data from device-initiated read ahead operations as well as frequently used data. The read cache is transparent to the user and can be enabled without any adverse effect. Most devices with a read cache come from the factory with it enabled. The read cache can be disabled by setting the RCD (Read Cache Disable) bit in the caching control mode page.

The write cache can greatly decrease the latency of write operations and allows the device to reorganize writes to increase efficiency and performance. This performance gain comes at a price. Should the device lose power while its cache contains uncommitted write operations, these writes will be lost. The effect of a loss of write transactions on a file system is non-deterministic and can cause corruption. Most devices age write transactions to limit vulnerability to a few transactions recently reported as complete, but it is none-the-less recommended that systems with write cache enabled devices reside on an Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS). The da device driver ensures that the cache and media are synchronized upon final close of the device or an unexpected shutdown (panic) event. This ensures that it is safe to disconnect power once the operating system has reported that it has halted. The write cache can be enabled by setting the WCE (Write Cache Enable) bit in the caching control mode page.

The da device driver will take full advantage of the SCSI feature known as tagged queueing. Tagged queueing allows the device to process multiple transactions concurrently, often re-ordering them to reduce the number and length of seeks. To ensure that transactions to distant portions of the media, which may be deferred indefinitely by servicing requests nearer the current head position, are completed in a timely fashion, an ordered tagged transaction is sent every 15 seconds during continuous device operation.

Direct Access devices have the capability of mapping out portions of defective media. Media recovery parameters are located in mode page 1, the Read-Write Error Recovery mode page. The most important media remapping features are 'Auto Write Reallocation' and 'Auto Read Reallocation' which can be enabled via the AWRE and ARRE bits, respectively, of the Read-Write Error Recovery page. Many devices do not ship from the factory with these feature enabled. Mode pages can be examined and modified via the camcontrol(8) utility.

It is only necessary to explicitly configure one da device; data structures are dynamically allocated as disks are found on the SCSI bus.

The following ioctl(2) calls apply to SCSI disks as well as to other disks. They are defined in the header file <sys/disklabel.h>.

Usually used to set up a bad-block mapping system on the disk. SCSI drives incorporate their own bad-block mapping so this command is not implemented.
Read, from the kernel, the in-core copy of the disklabel for the drive. This may be a fictitious disklabel if the drive has never been initialized, in which case it will contain information read from the SCSI inquiry commands.
Give the driver a new disklabel to use. The driver will not write the new disklabel to the disk.
Enable or disable the driver's software write protect of the disklabel on the disk.
Give the driver a new disklabel to use. The driver will write the new disklabel to the disk.

If a device becomes invalidated (media is removed, device becomes unresponsive) the disklabel and information held within the kernel about the device will be invalidated. To avoid corruption of a newly inserted piece of media or a replacement device, all accesses to the device will be discarded until the last file descriptor referencing the old device is closed. During this period, all new open attempts will be rejected.

/dev/rdau
raw mode SCSI disk unit u, accessed as an unpartitioned device
/dev/dausn
block mode SCSI disk unit u, slice n, accessed as an unpartitioned device
/dev/rdausn
raw mode SCSI disk unit u, slice n, accessed as an unpartitioned device
/dev/daup
block mode SCSI disk unit u, first DragonFly slice, partition p
/dev/rdaup
raw mode SCSI disk unit u, first DragonFly slice, partition p
/dev/dausnp
block mode SCSI disk unit u, nth slice, partition p
/dev/rdausnp
raw mode SCSI disk unit u, nth slice, partition p

None.

ad(4), disklabel(5), disklabel(8), fdisk(8)

The da driver was written for the CAM SCSI subsystem by Justin T. Gibbs. Many ideas were gleaned from the sd device driver written and ported from Mach 2.5 by Julian Elischer. Support for slices was written by Bruce Evans.

October 15, 1998 DragonFly-5.6.1