device atapicam not enabled in GENERIC kernel for FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE

[Kris Kennaway]

On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 05:12:36PM -0400, Duane Whitty wrote:
> On Saturday 04 March 2006 17:30, Kris 
> Kennaway wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 04, 2006 at 05:26:37PM 
> -0400, Duane Whitty wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Just wondering if anyone has any
> > > information/opinion as to why
> > > device atapicam is not enabled by
> > > default in the GENERIC kernel.
> >
> > It's not an appropriate default,
> > since it modifies the way the ata
> > subsystem works in ways the
> > maintainer does not wish to support,
> 
> Sorry, but do you mean the ata subsystem 
> maintainer or the atapicam maintainer?

The former.

> Is atapicam part of the base?

Yes.

>  I was 
> under the impression it implements an 
> abstracted SCSI interface over the ata 
> device subsystem but maybe I'm not 
> adequately understanding what's really 
> happening.

As the name suggests, it provides a CAM front-end to the devices,
which is the same front-end used by the SCSI devices, so tools that
expect to use CAM can work on the ATA devices too.

> Just an observation but it seems as 
> though there is a great deal of use 
> being made of the atapicam subsystem.  
> I noticed for instance that in addition 
> to /dev/cd0 that /dev/pass0 
> and /dev/da0 also did not show up until 
> I rebuilt with atapicam or did I just 
> miss them?

The equivalent devices have different names under atapicam than ata,
but why do you think they are necessary?

> Unless I'm wrong doesn't this mean that 
> usb drives and those types of devices 
> need the atapicam subsystem?

I suspect you're wrong.

Kris
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