Introduction
------------
sdparm is a utility for listing and potentially changing SCSI disk
parameters. More generally it can be used on any device that uses
a SCSI command set. Apart form SCSI disks, examples of devices that
use SCSI command sets are ATAPI CD/DVD drives, SCSI and ATAPI tape
drives and SCSI enclosures.

This utility was originally written for Linux. It has been ported
to FreeBSD and Tru64.

Relationship to sg3_utils
-------------------------
This package shares code with sg3_utils (version 1.19).
sg3_utils is a package of utilities that typically act at the SCSI
command level. sg3_utils is written by the same author. The shared code
(sg_lib.[hc] and sg_cmds.[hc]) includes tables of SCSI command names
and additional sense code descriptions as well as functions for
issuing common SCSI commands.

Currently the shared code is statically compiled in to each package.
It is the intention of the author to make a common library called
libsgutils.so in a separate package that both sdparm and sg3_utils
will depend on at some point in the future.

Documentation
-------------
The executable outputs a usage message when the "--help" (or '-h)
option is given. Many syntax errors also result in the usage message
being printed. There is also a man page which is in chapter 8. It
can be accessed with "man sdparm" once this package is installed. Prior
to installation the man page can be viewed from this package's
main directory with "man ./sdparm.8".

There is a web page at http://www.torque.net/sg/sdparm.html and
a copy of that html file is placed in the "doc" directory.

Build infrastructure
--------------------
This is the first time the author has used the automake and autoconf
tools. So anybody who has problems or suggestions please contact the
author. The generating files (scripts) are configure.ac, Makefile.am,
src/Makefile.am and autogen.sh . The autogen.sh script only needs
to be executed if one of the other generating files in the above list
is changed.

There is a rpm "spec" file in the main directory: sdparm.spec .
There are debian build files in the "debian" directory.

License
-------
This utility is covered by a FreeBSD license. The intention of the author
is that both open source and commercial entities can re-use this code.
Naturally credit and improvement/bug feedback are encouraged. The part
of this code that others may be able to re-use is the information in
the tables in sdparm_data.c and sg_lib.c . This is information garnered
from "SCSI" drafts and standards at http://www.t10.org (plus some
information from the ATA drafts and standards at http://www.t13.org ).

Notes
-----
The following files were symlinks to /usr/share/automake-1.9 generic
files on the author's system. That doesn't seem useful to put in
a tarball so versions were copied. Former symlinks:
   - config.guess
   - config.sub
   - depcomp
   - install-sh
   - missing
The above file copies have been updated to match with automake version
1.9.5 as found in Fedora Core 4 (linux).
The contents of INSTALL have been replaced by more specific instructions.
The contents of COPYING is a FreeBSD license (rather than the GPL v2).


Douglas Gilbert
9th May 2006
