Alignment of disk-I/O from userland.

[Mark Valentine]

> From: Garrett Wollman <wollman at khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>
> Date: Mon 6 Oct, 2003
> Subject: Re: Alignment of disk-I/O from userland.

> I think you've got that backwards.  When we had block devices, they
> would provide extra buffering to avoid I/O-size breakage.  Character
> devices, which are all we have now, never made any promises.

My point was that we did have block devices which could make such
promises, and that without them the raw device must offer an equivalent
promise (especially when you consider binary compatibility - a program
opening /dev/da0c was written assuming a block device interface).

		Cheers,

		Mark.

-- 
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich."
"We're kind of stupid that way."   *munch* *munch*
  -- <http://www.calvinandhobbes.com>