Disk Drivers

Disk drivers should be tested in both the raw and block device modes. For block device tests, a new file system should be created on the device and mounted. Multiple file operations can be performed on the device at this time.

The file system uses a page cache, so reading the same file over and over again will not really exercise the driver. The page cache can be forced to retrieve data from the device by memory-mapping the file (with mmap(2)), and using msync(2) to invalidate the in-memory copies.

Another (unmounted) partition of the same size can be copied to the raw device and then commands such as fsck(1M) can be used to verify the correctness of the copy. The new partition can also be mounted and compared to the old one on a file-by-file basis.