inappropriate ioctl for device

[Tonatiuh]

Red Hat Enterprise Linux AS 4 update 1

1) What dows it means?
2) How to solve it?
3) May this problem cause hard disk performs slow?

# /sbin/hdparm -Tt /dev/cciss/c0d1p1

/dev/cciss/c0d1p1:
Timing cached reads: 1888 MB in 2.00 seconds = 942.73 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
Timing buffered disk reads: 232 MB in 3.02 seconds = 76.78 MB/sec
HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(null) (wait for flush complete) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device

[Matti_Kurkela · Accepted solution]

1.) hdparm sent an IDE-disk-specific ioctl command to a CCISS hardware RAID driver (not an IDE disk system, more like SCSI). Apparently the ioctl was a "null command" to make the program wait for the completion of some disk operation.

2.) The "hdparm" command is primarily for ATA/IDE disks. Don't expect hdparm to work with hardware RAID or other non-IDE disks. If you want to test disk performance, use tools like "bonnie" or "iozone".

3.) No.