CONTROLLER(4)CONTROLLER(4)NAME
controller, disk, tape, at, bios, esdi, aha1540, ncr810, dosfile, fat‐
file - controllers, disks and tapes
DESCRIPTION
The cn* family of devices refer to drivers that control disks, disk
like devices, and tapes. MINIX 3 contains a number of drivers for sev‐
eral different controllers. These controllers can have disks, cdroms
and tapes attached to them. Boot Monitor variables specify which driv‐
ers are activated using the variables c0, c1, etc. The names of the
devices in /dev that correspond with the driver for controller 0 are
all named beginning with c0.
For each controller, the minor device numbers are organized as follows:
minor device what? obsolete
0 d0 disk 0 hd0
1 d0p0 disk 0, partition 0 hd1
2 d0p1 disk 0, partition 1 hd2
3 d0p2 disk 0, partition 2 hd3
4 d0p3 disk 0, partition 3 hd4
5 d1 disk 1 hd5
6 d1p0 disk 1, partition 0 hd6
7 d1p1 disk 1, partition 1 hd7
8 d1p2 disk 1, partition 2 hd8
9 d1p3 disk 1, partition 3 hd9
... ...
39 d7p3 disk 7, partition 3 hd39
64 t0n tape 0, non-rewinding
65 t0 tape 0, rewind on close
66 t1n tape 1, non-rewinding
67 t1 tape 1, rewind on close
... ...
78 t7n tape 7, non-rewinding
79 t7 tape 7, rewind on close
120 r0 raw access device 0
121 r1 raw access device 1
... ...
127 r7 raw access device 7
128 d0p0s0 disk 0, part 0, subpart 0 hd1a
129 d0p0s1 disk 0, part 0, subpart 1 hd1b
130 d0p0s2 disk 0, part 0, subpart 2 hd1c
131 d0p0s3 disk 0, part 0, subpart 3 hd1d
132 d0p1s0 disk 0, part 1, subpart 0 hd2a
... ...
144 d1p0s0 disk 1, part 0, subpart 0 hd6a
... ...
255 d7p3s3 disk 7, part 3, subpart 3 hd39d
The device names in /dev also name the controller, of course, so the
usual place for the MINIX 3 root device, the first subpartition of the
second partition of disk 0 on controller 0 is /dev/c0d0p1s0. Note that
everything is numbered from 0! The first controller is controller 0,
the first disk is disk 0, etc. So the second partition is p1.
The fourth column in the table above shows the disk devices names that
were used by previous versions of MINIX 3 for what is now controller 0.
These devices are no longer present in /dev.
Disks
Most disks are arrays of 512 byte sectors. The disk devices are nor‐
mally block devices, which means they are block buffered by the MINIX 3
file system cache using 1024 byte blocks. The FS cache allows I/O at
any byte offset, and takes care of cutting and pasting incomplete
blocks together. If one creates a character device for a disk device,
then I/O must be in multiples of the disk block size.
For each disk there is a device that covers the entire disk, these are
named c0d0, c0d1, etc, up to c0d7 for controller 0. If a partition ta‐
ble is placed in the first sector of the disk, then the disk is subdi‐
vided into regions named partitions. Up to four partitions may be
defined, named c0d0p0 to c0d0p3 for disk 0 on controller 0. To make
things interesting you can also place a partition table in the first
sector of a MINIX 3 partition, which divides the partition into up to
four subpartitions. Normally MINIX 3 is installed into a single parti‐
tion, with the root, /home, and /usr file systems in subpartitions.
If a partition is an extended partition then it contains a linked list
of partition tables each of which may specify a logical partition. Up
to four of these logical partitions are presented by the driver as sub‐
partitions of the extended partition.
A sector containing a partition table starts with 446 bytes of boot
code, followed by four partition table entries of 16 bytes each, and
ends with the magic number 0xAA55 (little endian, so first 0x55 then
0xAA.) Partition table information is defined in <ibm/partition.h>:
/* Description of entry in the partition table. */
struct part_entry {
unsigned char bootind; /* boot indicator 0/ACTIVE_FLAG */
unsigned char start_head; /* head value for first sector */
unsigned char start_sec; /* sector value + high 2 cyl bits */
unsigned char start_cyl; /* low 8 cylinder bits */
unsigned char sysind; /* system indicator */
unsigned char last_head; /* h/s/c for the last sector */
unsigned char last_sec;
unsigned char last_cyl;
unsigned long lowsec; /* logical first sector */
unsigned long size; /* size of partition in sectors */
};
#define ACTIVE_FLAG 0x80 /* value for active in bootind field */
#define NR_PARTITIONS 4 /* number of entries in table */
#define PART_TABLE_OFF 0x1BE /* offset of table in boot sector */
/* Partition types (sysind). */
#define NO_PART 0x00 /* unused entry */
#define MINIX_PART 0x81 /* MINIX 3 partition type */
The cylinder numbers are encoded in a very strange way, bits 8 and 9
are in the high two bits of the sector number. The sector numbers
count from 1, not 0! More useful are the lowsec and size fields how‐
ever, they simply give the location of the partition as an absolute
sector offset and length within the drive.
The partition table entry defined above is specific to IBM type disks.
The device drivers use another partition entry structure to pass infor‐
mation on a partition. This is what <minix/partition.h> looks like:
struct partition {
u64_t base; /* byte offset to the partition start */
u64_t size; /* number of bytes in the partition */
unsigned cylinders; /* disk geometry for partitioning */
unsigned heads;
unsigned sectors;
};
The base and size fields are the byte offset and length of a partition.
The geometry of the disk is also given for the benefit of partition ta‐
ble editors. This information can be obtained from an open disk device
with the call:
ioctl(fd, DIOCGETP, &entry);
One can change the placement of the device to the lowsec and size
fields of entry by using the DIOCSETP call instead. Only the base and
size fields are used for DIOCSETP.
The partition tables when read from disk by the driver are checked and
truncated to fit within the primary partition or drive. The first sec‐
tor is normally left free for the partition table.
The partition tables are read when the in-use count (opens and mounts)
changes from 0 to 1. So an idle disk is automatically repartitioned on
the next access. This means that DIOCSETP only has effect if the disk
is in use.
Disk-like devices
Devices like a CD-ROM are treated as read-only disks, and can be
accessed using disk devices. A CD-ROM usually has a block size of 2048
bytes, but the driver knows this, and allows one to read at any byte
offset by reading what isn't needed into a scratch buffer.
Tapes
There are two kinds of tape devices: Non-rewinding, and rewind-on-
close. The non-rewinding devices treat the tape as a series of files.
The rewind-on-close devices look at the tape as a single file, and when
you close such a device the tape is told to rewind. 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.
There are two kinds of tape drives: Fixed and 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 docu‐
mentation of such devices.) The maximum is truncated to 32767 bytes
for Minix-86 and 61440 bytes for Minix-vmd, 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.
DRIVERS
By setting the Boot variables c0 to c3 under MINIX 3, or c0 to c4 under
Minix-vmd one attaches a set of disk and tape devices to a driver. See
boot(8) for a list of boot variables that configure each of these driv‐
ers. The following drivers are available:
at
The standard IBM/AT disk driver that also supports IDE disks. This is
the default driver for controller 0 on AT class machines. (Most PCs
are in that class.)
bios
A disk driver that uses BIOS calls to do disk I/O. This is the default
driver on anything but an AT. (Old XTs and PS/2s.) On an XT this is
the best driver you can use, but on any other machine this driver may
be somewhat slow, because the system has to switch out of protected
mode to make a BIOS call. On a fast enough machine with a high enough
setting of DMA_SECTORS (see config(8)) it works well enough.
esdi
A hard disk driver for use on some PS/2 models.
xt (MINIX 3 only)
A hard disk driver for IBM/XT type hard disks. Useful for old 286
based machines that have such a disk. On XTs you are better off with
the bios driver.
aha1540
A SCSI driver for the Adaptec 1540 host adapter family, which includes
the 1540, 1540A, 1540B, 1540C, 1540CF, 1640, and 1740. Also supported
is the compatible BusLogic 545.
ncr810
This will eventually become a Symbios 810 SCSI driver. (Formerly owned
by NCR.) KJB has read the docs on this card three times, but has still
done nothing, the lazy bum.
dosfile
The "DOS file as disk" driver that is used when MINIX 3 is running
under DOS. It treats a large DOS file as a MINIX 3 disk. Only primary
partitions are supported, there are no subpartitions. This is the
default driver when MINIX 3 is started under DOS.
fatfile
Uses a large file on a FAT file system as a disk. It needs one of the
other disk drivers to do the actual I/O. This driver only knows how to
interpret a FAT file system to find the file to use. With a fast
native disk driver this driver is much faster than the dosfile driver.
FILES
/dev/c*d* Disks devices.
/dev/c*d*p* Partitions.
/dev/c*d*p*s* Subpartitions.
/dev/c*t*n, /dev/c*t* Tapes.
/dev/c*r* Raw access devices.
SEE ALSOdd(1), mt(1), eject(1), ioctl(2), int64(3), mtio(4), boot(8), con‐
fig(8), monitor(8), part(8), repartition(8).
BUGS
The subpartitioning is incompatible with the MS-DOS method of extended
partitions. The latter does not map well to the sparse minor device
number space.
The primary partition table is sorted by lowsec like MS-DOS does, sub‐
partition tables are not. Just think about what happens when you
delete a partition in the MS-DOS scheme.
Don't move a partition that is mounted or kept open by some process.
The file system may write cached blocks to the new location.
The BIOS driver is not slow at all on a buffered disk.
Some IDE disks send an interrupt when they spin down under hardware
power management. The driver acknowledges the interrupt as it is sup‐
posed to do by reading the status register. The disk then spins up
again... You have to disable the spin down in the computer setup to
fix the problem.
AUTHOR
Kees J. Bot (kjb@cs.vu.nl)
CONTROLLER(4)