A use for IDE taskfile access [LWN.net]

A number of people have complained about the removal of the IDE taskfile operations from the 2.5 version of the driver. For anybody wondering why people might want this obscure capability, consider this posting from Scott Tillman. Scott is working on the "port Linux to the XBox" effort. It turns out that the XBox IDE drive will not allow access to its sectors until a special, vendor-specific "password" command has been run. Taskfile access is needed to be able to issue that password.

Of course, providing taskfile access so that this command can be issued could, with a broad reading, be seen as a violation of the DMCA's anticircumvention measures. It is a bit of a stretch, and depends on whether the special command is just seen as vendor-specific initialization, or whether it is really a "technological measure" for copyright protection. Unfortunately, a broad reading of the DMCA seems to be in vogue in the U.S. these days.

The XBox team, meanwhile, has a bunch of code it has written for dealing with the XBox partition scheme and filesystem. They will port it to 2.5 if it appears that it might actually get merged. That may well happen; the fun of running Linux on Microsoft-subsidized hardware could be irresistible.

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A use for IDE taskfile access

Posted Jul 4, 2002 14:47 UTC (Thu) by beejaybee (guest, #1581) [Link]

The idea that removing this patch is either neccessary or sufficient to comply with DMCA anticircumvention methods is simply ridiculous. At worst the XBox hack would need to replace the HDD and its controller ... surely these are industry standard parts? (Though maybe strangely configured!)

The point is this - having been published, the source code of the patch isn't going to go away: anyone with a real need to implement the functionality is going to be able to port it to whatever version of the kernel they want & compile it in.

If DMCA requires that it is not possible to apply this patch, then DMCA effectively outlaws linux, along with the whole concept of independent software development. The alternative argument would be that _implementing_ the patch (i.e. compiling a kernel with the option in, as opposed to distributing it in source form) _with the intention of bypassing copyright protection_ would be a breach of the DMCA by whoever compiled the kernel. This seems (slightly) more reasonable to me. Or is even posession of a C compiler going to be made illegal on the grounds that one can design and code a program which can do anything within the bounds of the capability of the hardware it's run on?

BTW I don't have and intend never to buy an XBox. Also I'm outside the territory subject to the machinations of the DMCA, and intend remaining so!

A use for IDE taskfile access

Posted Jul 5, 2002 12:07 UTC (Fri) by Nero (guest, #2085) [Link]

Why is he porting 2.5 and not 2.4? (to the xbox - not like it would be a remotely useful testing platform....)