>> Yes and yes. It simply removes the protection, letting the host see >> the HPA as what it really is: more space appended to the space >> advertised to HPA-unaware software.
> I don't really like silently appending the host protected area to the > unprotected part of the disk. Exposing something that is supposed to > be hidden could have unexpected consequences. I'm not sure I like it either. It's one reason I said someone might want to "look at [my code] as a possible basis for something" rather than suggesting adopting it directly; what I have now is more proof-of-concept than ready-to-go. > I think I'd prefer to present the HPA as a separate device (an ld(4) > device, as others have suggested, would be fine), and add some ioctls > and atactl commands to query and adjust the sizes of the ordinary and > HPA parts of the disk. Sounds like a reasonable interface plan. I'm not sure how well the disk infrastructure would deal with a disk changing size, but that's the only issue I foresee with such a thing - or, at least, the only issue that wouldn't already come up in doing what's sketched above. I'll probably have a stab at this, but someone who knows the disk infrastructure better than I do could probably do a better job. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML [email protected] / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
