Re: Interface for SCSI transactions ?

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

> Time to nag you again:)

I can stand that. :)


> I assume you are a GNU fan

I am a GNU maintainer. Not that this would involve much of
a carreer or promotion, but nevertheless i maintain GNU xorriso.


> How much effort is needed, do you think, to get CD/DVD/RW/RW
> capabilities for GNU/Hurd.

Not to forget Blu-ray (BD).

Well, my excuse situation is unchanged. Please correct me if i
missed decisive changes in Mach and Hurd.

- We have no agreed RPC call that could do the equivalent
  of GNU/Linux ioctl(SG_IO).
  I have submitted some alternatives and could privately try
  to implement one of them. A working proof-of-concept could
  then be polished until it fits into the overall architecture.

- Last time i looked into the Mach code for driving ATAPI and
  SCSI, it was still from outdated Linux kernels which i could
  not use with the libburn system adapter for Linux kernels.
  I understand that this old code is prone to get replaced
  by stuff that can drive modern hardware.

- I have no computer any more on which i could install GNU/Hurd
  as non-virtual system.
  I managed to install it on qemu-kvm with Debian 6 GNU/Linux as
  host system. But there i get at most an emulated CD-ROM drive
  with questionable behavior. It is simply not a sufficient model
  for a CD/DVD/BD burner, although it could suffice for a coarse
  proof-of-concept.
  It is possible to give a Debian GNU/Linux guest access to a
  real DVD drive of the host system. Not perfectly, but roughly
  sufficient for production.
  Thanks to Paolo Bonzini who made this possible in qemu.
    http://libburnia-project.org/wiki/QemuXorriso
  I understand that the qemu facilities used in this endeavor
  need counterparts in the guest kernel.
  No way to see for me how i could get Debian GNU/Hurd to
  that capability.

We can well re-assess the situation. But i still have few
motivation to lonely climb down in the cellar regions of Mach
and Hurd. My expertise is about the SCSI command set, the
peculiar behavior of MMC drives, and in part about peculiar
behavior of the kernels of Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris.

I am not an expert for driver programming. Neither for the
necessary protocols, nor for proper integration of a driver
into a general purpose operating system.
I would need a warden who keeps me from doing bad things.
And such a warden could probably do the good things better
than i could.
So actually i'd need a project leader, who uses me as source
of knowledge about SPC and MMC, and who can rely on me doing
the necessary changes in libburn so that overall success can
happen. 


Have a nice day :)

Thomas