Dear all;

I read , Linux does NOT natively give us any facility to create by default raw devices. Kernel natively does not support raw devices. If so, why linux has /dev/raw* ?

Distro :RHEL

Where did you read linux does not support raw devices? What are you trying to accomplish?

Distro RHEL but which version (you can cat /etc/redhat-release to determine version).

Anyway Linux kernel does support raw. For a while they said raw was deprecated and would be removed in future releases because of directIO but they apparently rescinded that deprecation sometime back.

You can use the "raw" command to bind raw devices. Type "man 8 raw" for details of that command. Depending on version you may also be able to use udev rules.

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Hi MensaWater and michaelk

Sorry michaelk, Little correction:

Those points were given by my tutor (who is teaching Linux subject)
what he told i am saying here.

RAW==> raw is deprecated so taht there is no raw device name assigned by linux because kernel natively does NOT support.

Your tutor is wrong.
raw is noted as deprecated (and has been for many years), but is still supported on the latest 4.4 kernel I am running. From the kernel options:

I'm wondering why you are using such an old system. RHEL was first released in February, 2015 and the update 8 over 6 years ago and support for any ended a year ago. I don't know that the support would matter but it is very outdated. I would think using CentOS which is basically Red Hat without the Trademarks and support would be better as you can download a current version for free.

https://access.redhat.com/articles/3078#RHEL4

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However, it is true that unlike UNIX variants such as Solaris, AIX and HP-UX, Linux does not create a raw (character) device for each disk automatically. UNIX variants do and often require administrative tools to use the raw rather than the block device. Linux uses the block device for administration so you only need raw (character) devices for specialized applications such as Oracle ASM for databases.

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Just because it doesn't create a raw device for each disk automatically doesn't mean it doesn't support raw devices...you just have to use the "raw" command to make them.

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Yep and I said that in my first reply to the OP. I also noted the previous deprecation was retracted at some point. Looking today I see that retraction was suggested by someone at RedHat back in 2007.

Actual my question is ' as we know raw is deprecated from linux. if so Why still linux has /dev/raw* ?

# ls -l /dev/raw*
crw------- 1 root root 162, 0 Jan 2 19:05 /dev/rawctl

That was my actual question.

The raw driver is deprecated and will be removed soon.
Applications should simply open the device (eg /dev/hda1) with the O_DIRECT flag.


/dev/hda1- is this file system in linux ??

I think you've missed twice now I've said it is NOT deprecated in Linux any longer although at one point it was:

From:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_device

Deprecated does not mean removed - it means they suggest you don't use it. The deprecation was because they intended to remove it at some future point but never actually did.

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Hi there,

/dev/sd<x> ---> I can understabd
/dev/hda1 ---> is this new file system ? or some other ?

Thanks All

/dev/sd<x> ---> SCSI Disk
/dev/hd<x> ---> Non-SCSI Hard Disk (e.g. IDE)

/dev/sd<x><#> = partition on the disk (e.g /dev/sdb4 would be the 4th partition on second SCSI disk, sdb)
/dev/hd<x><#> = partition on the disk (e.g. /dev/hda1 would be the first partition on the first non-SCSI disk, hda)

They supposedly made a change in the kernel some time back to get rid of /dev/hd* nomenclature for most purposes but I do still see some things like USB drives come up that way. Most drives however, use the /dev/sd<x> naming as of 2.6.x kernels. Most hardware RAID controllers like Dell PERC (LSI OEM) and SAN presented disks are going to show up as /dev/sd<x>.

The above devices are not "filesystems" but you can layout filesystems on them. You can also use them as the basis for raw devices by using the raw command I mentioned early on to bind them. You can also use them for things like swap.

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Thanks MensaWater and thanks all.

HELLO MENSA WATER

ASM Feature Supports 2 different types of IO.

If possible , please post your answer on following thread.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...85#post5489085

Hopefully i am expecting your reply.
It would help me