Hi All,
Have the following code which tries to read a raw device on Linux 2.4.21-9.0.1.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int fd=-1;
int readSize;
char buffer[2048];
int ioFlag = 0;
mode_t mode = 0;
if(argc < 2)
{
printf("usage:test <fileName>\n");
exit(1);
}

if((fd = open(argv[1], ioFlag, mode)) < 0)
{
perror("file open failure:");
exit(1);
}

printf("fd = %d \n" , fd);
if(read(fd, (void *)buffer, 1024 ) < 0)
{
printf("errno = %d \n", errno);
perror("file read failure:");
exit(1);
}

close(fd);

return 0;
}

I compiled the program using gcc 3.2.3 as follows
gcc -o test test.c

Ran the program as follows :-
./test /dev/raw/raw1

The output was as follows :-
fd = 3
errno = 22
file read failure:: Invalid argument


Anybody has any ideas why the program fails to read the raw device. The program can read other files successfully. It only has problems reading raw devices. Could not find anything on the net. The Oracle server seems to be able to read the raw device but my program cannot. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks
rajar

Hello,

can you please try to read 512 Bytes (default disk sector size).

So,
read(fd, (void *)buffer, 512 )

Do you have a filesystem on that particular Block device ?

If yes, what is the Blocksize of that Filesystem ?

Can you read with reading byte count = FS block size ?

Tried with number of bytes to be read as 512. No change in result.
The block size for the device is 4096.
Tried with FS block size. No change in result.

Hello rajar11,

I think I know what is happening. Since you are using direct I/O the buffers you pass to
the read and write call *have* to be *boundary alligned*

If you just reserve an array, no one guarantees that the memory area for that array
is memory alligned.

So I have changed a little bit your program, in the way that now
memalign is used instead of an array. I have used 512 Byte as boundary
which is the default disk sector size. The reserved size is 1k (1024 Byte)


#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <errno.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <fcntl.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
int fd=-1;
int readSize;
/* char buffer[2048]; We 'll allocate memory instead using Arrays */
char *buffer;
int ioFlag = 0;
mode_t mode = 0;
if(argc < 2)
{
printf("usage:test <fileName>\n");
exit(1);
}


/* Now allocate memory - boundary alligned */
if ((buffer=(char*) memalign(512, 1024))==NULL){
printf ("Error allocating memory\n");
exit (1);
}

if((fd = open(argv[1], ioFlag, mode)) < 0)
{
perror("file open failure:");
exit(1);
}

printf("fd = %d \n" , fd);
if(read(fd, (void *)buffer, 1024 ) < 0)
{
printf("errno = %d \n", errno);
perror("file read failure:");
exit(1);
}

close(fd);

return 0;
}

Thank you very much.