2.9BSD/usr/man/cat4/rf.4
RF(4) UNIX Programmer's Manual RF(4)
NAME
rf - RF11/RS11 fixed-head disk
DESCRIPTION
This file refers to the concatenation of all RS-11 disks.
Each disk contains 1024 512-byte blocks. The length of the
combined RF file is 1024x(minor+1) blocks. That is, minor
device zero is taken to be 1024 blocks long; minor device
one is 2048 blocks long, etc.
The block files access the disk via the system's normal
buffering mechanism and may be read and written without
regard to physical disk records. There is also a `raw'
interface which provides for direct transmission between the
disk and the user's read or write buffer. A single read or
write call results in exactly one I/O operation and there-
fore raw I/O is considerably more efficient when many words
are transmitted. The name of the raw files conventionally
begin with an extra `r.'
In raw I/O counts should be a multiple of 512 bytes (a disk
sector). Likewise _l_s_e_e_k(2) calls should specify a multiple
of 512 bytes.
FILES
/dev/rf[0-7] block files
/dev/rrf[0-7] raw files
SEE ALSO
dvhp(4), hk(4), hp(4), hs(4), ml(4), rk(4), rl(4), rm(4),
rp(4), rx2(4), xp(4)
DIAGNOSTICS
rf%d: hard error bn %d cs=%b dae=%b. An unrecoverable error
occured during transfer of the specified sector of the
specified disk partition. The contents of the two error
registers are also printed in octal and symbolically with
bits decoded. The error was either unrecoverable, or a
large number of retry attempts could not recover the error.
rf%d: write locked. The write protect switch was set on the
drive when a write was attempted. The write operation is
not recoverable.
BUGS
In raw I/O _r_e_a_d and _w_r_i_t_e(2) truncate file offsets to 512-
byte block boundaries, and _w_r_i_t_e scribbles on the tail of
incomplete blocks. Thus, in programs that are likely to
access raw devices, _r_e_a_d, _w_r_i_t_e and _l_s_e_e_k(2) should always
deal in 512-byte multiples.
Printed 7/31/83 1
RF(4) UNIX Programmer's Manual RF(4)
DEC-standard error logging should be supported.
Printed 7/31/83 2