devb-ahci

Driver for AHCI SATA interfaces (QNX Neutrino)

Note: You must be root or have the right abilities to start this driver.

Syntax:

devb-ahci [cam option[,option]...]
          [mem option[,option]...]
          [ahci option[,option]...]
          [blk option[,option]...] &

Runs on:

QNX Neutrino

Options:

Note: Use commas (,) to separate the options. You can put the cam, mem, ahci, and blk groups of options in any order.
cam options
The cam options control libcam.so. If specified, they must follow the cam keyword.
mem options
name=tname
The typed memory name to use. This option lets you restrict the driver to use memory only from a particular region, which is often necessary for DMA and smmuman. If you set this option, it can benefit performance to set the same option in the blk layer as well, depending on the size of the typed memory region. The cam layer will move data between the blk layer and the typed memory.
Note: It's up to the startup to set up typed memory. For more information, see Typed memory in the “Interprocess Communication (IPC)” chapter of the System Architecture guide.
ahci options
The ahci options control the driver's interface to the AHCI controller. If you've installed multiple controllers, you can repeat these options for each controller. Remember, however, to specify the ahci keyword before each controller's set of options.
  • Interface-specific options:
    did=did
    The device ID of the controller.
    ioport=addr
    The address of the interface.
    irq=req
    The interrupt used by the controller.
    nobmstr
    Don't use busmastering. Specify this option if you want to disable DMA.
    nports=num
    Set the number of ports.
    pci=index
    The PCI index of the controller in the machine, where index is a value between 0 and the number of adapters.
    pi=bitmap
    Set the ports implemented bitmap. For example, pi=0x4 specifies port 2.
    port=N,device
    Specify options for device on port N.
    priority=prio
    Set the priority of the processing thread. The default is 21.
    pwrdwn
    Power down the device on exit.
    rtime=timeout
    Set the reset timeout, in seconds. The default is 40.
    timeout=timeout
    Set the I/O request timeout, in seconds. The default is 10.
    vid=vid
    The vendor ID of the controller.
  • Device-specific options:
    chs
    Use Cylinder-Head-Sector mode. The default is LBA.
    geometry=heads:cyl:sect
    Specify the drive geometry.
    multiblk=blks
    Set multiblock mode, using the given number of blocks per interrupt.
    nobmstr
    Don't use busmastering. Specify this option if you want to disable DMA.
    nonremovable
    Report the device as being nonremovable.
    rahead=state
    Enable or disable device read-ahead, where state is on or off.
    smart
    Enable SMART monitoring. If there are problems with the drive, the driver puts a message in the system log (see slog2info and slogger2).
    Note: The message is logged only at startup.

    There currently isn't a mechanism to retrieve SMART data.

    verbose=level
    Set the device verbosity level.
    wcache=state
    Enable or disable device write cache, where state is on or off.
blk options
The blk options control io-blk.so. If specified, they must follow the blk keyword.

Description:

The devb-ahci supports the Intel AHCI SATA controller ith the following device IDs:

Note: You need to enable AHCI mode in the BIOS.

Examples:

Detect all SATA controllers, and list all connected devices:

devb-ahci &

Detect all SATA controllers and use a typed memory region named dma (which the startup must have set up):

devb-ahci mem name=/ram/dma &

Files:

The devb-ahci driver causes io-blk.so to adopt various block special devices under /dev. These devices are normally named hdn, where n is the physical unit number of the device.

This driver could also require the following shared objects:

Binary Required
cam-disk.so For hard-disk access.
libcam.so Always

Exit status:

The devb-ahci driver terminates only if an error occurs during startup, or if it has successfully forked itself upon startup because it hadn't been initially started in the background.

0
The devb-ahci driver wasn't started in the background and therefore forked itself. The original process terminated with a zero exit status, the forked process continued.
> 0
An error occurred during startup.

Caveats:

Unless overridden with the blk automount= option (see io-blk.so), devices are mounted as:

Device Mountpoint Filesystem type
/dev/hd0t177 /hd qnx6
/dev/hd0t6 /dos dos
/dev/hd0t11 /dos dos

While there's no limit to the size of a disk or partition, the limit on I/O (i.e., the lseek(), read() and write() functions) depends on the type of filesystem mounted and on whether you use the 32- or 64-bit versions of these functions. This I/O limit has no effect on the partition size for mounted filesystems. The maximum number of blocks is 232.

Known supported functions include:

chmod(), chown(), close(), closedir(), creat(), devctl(), dup(), dup2(), fcntl(), fpathconf(), fstat(), lseek(), mkdir(), mkfifo(), mknod(), open(), opendir(), pathconf(), read(), readdir(), readlink(), rewinddir(), rmdir(), stat(), symlink(), unlink() (not supported for directories), utime(), write()

Note that certain calls (such as pipe(), as well as read() and write() on FIFOs) may require the pipe manager.