EIDE

EIDE interfaces use the devb-eide driver, which by default automatically detects the interface and devices attached to it.

The devb-eide driver includes support for UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) modes, along with the generic PIO (Programmed Input/Output) modes. The supported hardware list includes adapters and their supported features; see the introduction to this chapter.

You can start the devb-eide driver without any options and, by default, it automatically detects the EIDE controller on the system:

devb-eide &

When the driver starts, it detects all EIDE devices attached to the chain. For each device, the driver creates an entry in the /dev directory (e.g., a hard drive appears as hdx, where x is the number of the drive, starting from 0).

For example, suppose a system has two hard drives installed. The driver creates the following entries in the /dev directory:

/dev/hd0
Usually the primary master.
/dev/hd1
Usually the primary slave, or the next drive on the system (the secondary master).

If the system has one hard drive and a CD-ROM, the entries are:

/dev/hd0
The primary master.
/dev/cd0
The CD-ROM drive.
Note: A slave drive must have a master drive.

When the driver starts, it displays on the console the type of detected hardware, along with other debugging information that gets sent to the system logger, slogger. To view the system log, run sloginfo.

Note: When you view the output from sloginfo, there will likely be a number of ASC_MEDIA_NOT_PRESENT entries. The driver logs these messages if there isn't a CD in the CD-ROM drive. You can generally ignore them.