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BIO(4)			 BSD Kernel Interfaces Manual			BIO(4)

NAME
     bio — Block IO ioctl tunnel pseudo-device

SYNOPSIS
     pseudo-device bio

DESCRIPTION
     The bio driver provides userland applications ioctl(2) access to devices
     otherwise not found as /dev nodes.	 The /dev/bio device node operates by
     delegating ioctl calls to a requested device driver.  Only drivers which
     have registered with the bio device can be accessed via this interface.

     The following device drivers register with bio for volume management:

	   arcmsr(4)  Areca Technology Corporation SATA RAID controller
	   cac(4)     Compaq RAID array controller
	   ciss(4)    Compaq Smart ARRAY 5/6 SAS/SATA/SCSI RAID controller
	   mfi(4)     LSI Logic & Dell MegaRAID SAS RAID controller

     The following ioctl calls apply to the bio device:

     BIOCLOCATE	       Locate a named device and give back a cookie to the
		       application for subsequent ioctl calls.	The cookie is
		       used to tunnel further ioctls to the right device.

     BIOCINQ	       Retrieve number of volumes and physical disks for a
		       specific device.

     BIOCDISK	       Retrieve detailed information for the specified physi‐
		       cal disk.  Information returned can include status,
		       size, channel, target, lun, vendor name, serial number,
		       and processor device (ses).

     BIOCDISK_NOVOL    Is just the same as BIOCDISK but doesn't require the
		       disks to be in volume sets, so this applies to any
		       physical disk connected to the controller.

		       Note: this ioctl might not be supported on all hard‐
		       ware.

     BIOCVOL	       Retrieve detailed information for the specified volume.
		       Information returned can include status, size, RAID
		       level, number of disks, device name association (sd?)
		       and vendor name.

     BIOCALARM	       Control the alarm beeper on the device.	Supported
		       states are: disable alarm, enable alarm, silence alarm,
		       status and test alarm.

		       Note: These options might not be supported on all hard‐
		       ware.

     BIOCBLINK	       Blink an LED of the specified physical disk.  Supported
		       blink states are: blink LED, unblink LED and blink
		       alarm LED.

		       Note: This option is only supported if the disk is gov‐
		       erned by ses(4) and the hardware supports hardware
		       blinking.

     BIOCSETSTATE      Alter the state of specified physical disk.  Supported
		       states are: create/remove hot-spare, create/remove pass
		       through disk, start/stop consistency check in a volume,
		       online disk and offline disk.

		       Note: These options might not be supported on all hard‐
		       ware.

     BIOCVOLOPS	       For operations in volume sets.  It's able to create and
		       remove a volume set in a supported RAID controller.

		       Note: this ioctl might not be supported on all hard‐
		       ware.

FILES
     /dev/bio  ioctl tunnel device

SEE ALSO
     ioctl(2), bioctl(8)

HISTORY
     The bio driver first appeared in OpenBSD 3.2 and NetBSD 4.0.

AUTHORS
     The bio driver was written by Niklas Hallqvist ⟨niklas@openbsd.org⟩.  The
     API was written by Marco Peereboom ⟨marco@openbsd.org⟩ and was extended
     even more for NetBSD by Juan Romero Pardines ⟨xtraeme@netbsd.org⟩.

BSD				 May 25, 2008				   BSD

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