Chapter 2. The

proc

File System

41

2.3.5.

/proc/ide/

This directory holds information about IDE devices on the system. Each IDE channel is represented

as a separate directory, such as

/proc/ide/ide0

and

/proc/ide/ide1

. In addition, a

drivers

file is also available, providing the version number of the various drivers used on the IDE channels:

ide cdrom version 4.59

ide floppy version 0.97

ide disk version 1.10

Many chipsets also provide an informational file in this directory that gives additional data concerning

the drives connected through the the channels. For example, a generic Intel PIIX4 Ultra 33 chipset

produces a

/proc/ide/piix

that will tell you whether DMA or UDMA is enabled for the devices

on the IDE channels:

Intel PIIX4 Ultra 33 Chipset.

              Primary Channel                  Secondary Channel              

enabled

enabled

              drive0           drive1          drive0            drive1       

DMA enabled:

yes

no

yes

no

UDMA enabled:

yes

no

no

no

UDMA enabled:

2

X

X

X

UDMA

DMA

PIO

Navigating into the directory for an IDE channel, such as

ide0

, provides additional information. The

channel

file provides the channel number, while the

model

tells you the bus type for the channel

(such as

pci

).

2.3.5.1. The Device Directory

Within each IDE channel directory is a device directory. The name of the device directory corresponds

to the drive letter in the

/dev/

directory. For instance the first IDE drive on

ide0

would be

hda

.

Note

There is a symlink to each of these device directories in the /proc/ide/ directory.

Each device directory contains a collection of information and statistics. The contents of these direc 

tories vary according to the type of device connected. Some of the more useful files common to many

devices include:

  cache

  The device's cache.

  capacity

  The capacity of the device, in 512 byte blocks.

  driver

  The driver and version used to control the device.

  geometry

  The physical and logical geometry of the device.

  media

  The type of device, such as a

disk

.