Naive question: 2.2.x or 2.4.x drvconfig equivalent in the works?

[Vincent Cojot]

Hello everyone,

	Sorry if this is in an FAQ but since I have never seen it
mentionned before during the few years that I've been on the aic7xxx
mailing list, I'm asking my question here... Is there a Linux equivalent
of the Solaris "drvconfig" command (limited to SCSI devices in our
case)..? On a Solaris system (sparc-based, don't know about
i86pc-Solaris), if you power-up your system with your external tape drive
powered-off and want to use it without rebooting, you may:

1) power up the external device

2) type "drvconfig" or "drvconfig -i st" or "drvconfig -i sd" if that's an
external SCSI drive. This works even if the device is on the same SCSI bus
as your boot devices.

	Is there such a thing under Linux? I guess it may be more
difficult to get there since SUN's use devices a-la-devfs natively while
Linux 2.x.x still natively uses /dev/sd?, unless I'm wrong.. I'm saying
that this would make it more difficult to write support for something like
this since - with the /dev/sd? setup - if you power-up a device on the
same bus as your already active SCSI devices but with a lower SCSI ID
number, then you would get into trouble (SCSI resets or worse since your
current drive would jump from sda to sdb, for example). (Please forgive
the poor english, I hope the explanation still remains understandable).
Device "jumping" is something you don't get with native support for
/dev/dsk/cXtXdXsX or /dev/scsi0/[...], I guess...

	Also, under Linux, if your boot disks are on your aic7xxx adapter
and if your un-powered SCSI tape in on an ncr53c8xx adapter, then you can
just power it up and rmmod/insmod the ncr53c8xx driver to force a bus
reset (happens at driver load) on your live system..  However, if all you
have is a set of several aic7xxx (I happen to have from scsi0 to scsi3 as
aic7xxx in my machine), then you obviously can't rmmod/insmod the aic7xxx
driver to make your system "see" the tape drive since only one driver is
loaded..  Is there a device-specific (perhaps?) way to force a bus reset?

,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,
Vincent S. Cojot, Computer Engineering. STEP project. _.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~
Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Comite Micro-Informatique. _.,-*~'`^`'~*-,.
Linux Xview/OpenLook resources page _.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._.,-*~'
http://step.polymtl.ca/~coyote  _.,-*~'`^`'~*-,._ coyote at step.polymtl.ca

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars - on stars where no human race is
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.       - Robert Frost






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