Legacy IDE Driver Now Deprecated, To Be Removed From Linux In 2021

[starshipeleven]

Annoyed about losing the legacy IDE driver, or annoyed about losing IDE totally?

Losing IDE support totally. I think I might have read your post wrong then.

[starshipeleven]

Excellent, I'm waiting for x86 32bit operating system be deprecated.

excellent, I'm waiting for people to not post this kind of bullshit.

[L_A_G]

Good to see that they were able to kick out the old PATA code like this, but it would also be nice if they could kick out the old SCSI code in a similar way. However in the early 2000s device makers decided not to kill SCSI but to create a serial and electrically SATA-compatible version called SAS. Now SATA drivers and controllers are now so heavily intertwined with SCSI that you can't get rid of the drivers for them without getting rid of SATA drivers at the same time.

Found this out the hard way when I was setting up a minimal kernel for an embedded application with very high uptime and IP security requirements when my efforts to remove unnecessary cruft (less to go wrong and be to attacked) ended up killing the SATA port in the process.

[rene]

But, AFAIK, a 486 at least is needed for current kernels... At least, I remember having read some time ago that they started to use some 486-specific instructions that simplified creating semaphores and other IPC systems...

yes, i know, i used the last possible kernel and even there non-cpuid CPUs crash due to broken code, ..!

[ferry]

Excellent, I'm waiting for x86 32bit operating system be deprecated.

Excellent. Please report back here about the new features and other advantages you find in Linux after that happens.

[Weasel]

Excellent, I'm waiting for x86 32bit operating system be deprecated.

Let's deprecate your brain first.

[ssokolow]

Hardware using IDE is still supported by the kernel.

I'd be personally annoyed by losing the IDE driver as I need it for ancient x86 (Geode) networking stuff running up-to-date OpenWrt, namely Pc Engines Alix boards. They run the CompactFlash card (with the device OS/firmware) over native IDE.

It's still mostly fine for normal networking and firewall usage, PBX and such.

If I remember correctly, the code they're getting rid of is the stuff that puts drives at /dev/hdX (hard drive X) while the modern PATA, SATA, and SCSI code all share the same /dev/sdX names that originally meant "SCSI drive X" and probably now mean "storage device X".

[ivazquez]

Good to see that they were able to kick out the old PATA code like this, but it would also be nice if they could kick out the old SCSI code in a similar way. However in the early 2000s device makers decided not to kill SCSI but to create a serial and electrically SATA-compatible version called SAS. Now SATA drivers and controllers are now so heavily intertwined with SCSI that you can't get rid of the drivers for them without getting rid of SATA drivers at the same time.

The SCSI driver you're complaining about is the protocol driver, which is used in at least 9 different wire-level modules and so it would be counter-productive to try to remove it. The HBA drivers, on the other hand, do get dropped from time to time.

[...] the modern PATA, SATA, and SCSI code all share the same /dev/sdX names that originally meant "SCSI drive X" and probably now mean "storage device X".

They're still SCSI drives, but only in protocol instead of bus.

[ssokolow]

They're still SCSI drives, but only in protocol instead of bus.

I think I'd remember if PATA hard drives spoke the SCSI protocol.

A quick look at the Wikipedia pages on SCSI and PATA reveals that ATAPI devices (eg. CD-ROM drives) speak SCSI commands tunneled over PATA, which I did not know, but they also give no evidence that non-ATAPI PATA devices (eg. PATA hard drives) use a SCSI-based protocol.

[ivazquez]

A quick look at the Wikipedia pages on SCSI and PATA reveals that ATAPI devices (eg. CD-ROM drives) speak SCSI commands tunneled over PATA, which I did not know, but they also give no evidence that non-ATAPI PATA devices (eg. PATA hard drives) use a SCSI-based protocol.

That's because libATA translates SCSI to ATA, which is why PATA drives went from hdX to sdX when distros started using it.