SDA is Now HDA

carlosinfl · 06-05-2007, 04:27 PM

I was noticing that on the Linux systems that use the new 2.6.20+ kernel, they are now recognizing /dev/sda as /dev/hda. Is this something that RHEL and CentOS is doing only or can we expect this to be Linux wide as the kernel gets updated?

Lenard · 06-05-2007, 04:40 PM

Don't you mean the other way around???? /dev/hd<something> is now /dev/sd<something>

Yes, one can expect this to be Linux wide as the kernel gets updated.

carlosinfl · 06-05-2007, 04:44 PM

No accordiong to Centos5 and RHEL5, all hard drives including S-ATA are being found as /dev/hda where as S-ATA use to be recognized as SCSI but I was told that Linus changed this in the kernel so that USB can be noted as sda and drives like P-ATA and S-ATA will be hda.

jay73 · 06-05-2007, 07:38 PM

This is getting awfully confusing. Ubuntu etc already identify PATA drives as sd - and now they are changing that again?

Lenard · 06-05-2007, 08:19 PM

Same here with a 2.6.20.11 kernel all drives ATAPI, USB or SATA are identified as SCSI devices.

syg00 · 06-05-2007, 08:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carlwill

No accordiong to Centos5 and RHEL5, all hard drives including S-ATA are being found as /dev/hda where as S-ATA use to be recognized as SCSI but I was told that Linus changed this in the kernel so that USB can be noted as sda and drives like P-ATA and S-ATA will be hda.

Perhaps you could supply a reference.
Given that Alan Cox was primarily responsible for the libata changes the others are referring to, and RHEL5 appears to be 2.6.18 (i.e. just prior to the libata changes shipped in 2.6.19) I must say I find your assertion unlikely.

Note: I haven't used either RHEL5 nor CentOS5.0

Emerson · 06-05-2007, 09:00 PM

The IDE stuff is still available in the latest kernel. As for now, nobody forces you to use PATA drivers meaning you still can have hdx devices. It just depends on how you configure your kernel.