On Fri, Mar 17, 2000 at 01:49:25AM -0600, Sandeep Sundaram wrote:
> Hi,
>
> How can I open a partition on a disk as a raw device? On solaris we
> have "rdisk" which is used to open a disk as a raw device. What is the
> equivalent on Linux.
>
Linus and Co didn't like the idea of raw [1] devices and opposed it's
inclusion. Recently though, after a lot of convincing by the database
vendors and other commercial interests, there is flag to open O_something
that opens the device in the raw mode.
But I think the new flag is there only in 2.3.x.
-Arun
[1] For those wondering what is a "raw" device, the reads from this device
are not buffered in the buffer cache. Such functionality is necessary
for databases to ensure ACID (atomicity...) properties.
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