SD(4)			   Linux Programmers Manual			SD(4)



NAME
       sd - Driver for SCSI Disk Drives

SYNOPSIS
       #include         /* for HDIO_GETGEO */
       #include 	       /* for BLKGETSIZE and BLKRRPART */

CONFIGURATION
       The block device name has the following form: sdlp, where l is a letter
       denoting the physical drive, and p is a number denoting	the  partition
       on  that  physical drive.  Often, the partition number, p, will be left
       off when the device corresponds to the whole drive.

       SCSI disks have a major device number of 8, and a minor	device	number
       of  the form (16 * drive_number) + partition_number, where drive_number
       is the number of the physical drive in order of detection,  and	parti
       tion_number is as follows:

       partition 0 is the whole drive
       partitions 1-4 are the DOS "primary" partitions
       partitions 5-8 are the DOS "extended" (or "logical") partitions

       For example, /dev/sda will have major 8, minor 0, and will refer to all
       of the first SCSI drive in the system; and /dev/sdb3 will have major 8,
       minor  19,  and	will refer to the third DOS "primary" partition on the
       second SCSI drive in the system.

       At this time, only block devices are provided.  Raw  devices  have  not
       yet been implemented.

DESCRIPTION
       The following ioctls are provided:

       HDIO_GETGEO
	      Returns the BIOS disk parameters in the following structure:

		  struct hd_geometry {
		      unsigned char  heads;
		      unsigned char  sectors;
		      unsigned short cylinders;
		      unsigned long  start;
		  };

	      A pointer to this structure is passed as the ioctl(2) parameter.

	      The information returned in the parameter is the	disk  geometry
	      of  the  drive  as  understood by DOS!  This geometry is not the
	      physical geometry of the drive.  It is  used  when  constructing
	      the  drives  partition table, however, and is needed for conve
	      nient operation of fdisk(1), efdisk(1),  and  lilo(1).   If  the
	      geometry information is not available, zero will be returned for
	      all of the parameters.

       BLKGETSIZE
	      Returns the device size  in  sectors.   The  ioctl(2)  parameter
	      should be a pointer to a long.

       BLKRRPART
	      Forces  a re-read of the SCSI disk partition tables.  No parame
	      ter is needed.

	      The scsi(4) ioctl(2) operations  are  also  supported.   If  the
	      ioctl(2)	parameter  is  required, and it is NULL, then ioctl(2)
	      will fail with the error EINVAL.

FILES
       /dev/sd[a-h]: the whole device
       /dev/sd[a-h][0-8]: individual block partitions

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of	the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  1992-12-17				 SD(4)