Blob Blame History Raw
--- util-linux-2.12a/disk-utils/raw.8.dd	2006-04-24 15:27:39.000000000 +0200
+++ util-linux-2.12a/disk-utils/raw.8	2006-04-24 15:53:46.000000000 +0200
@@ -15,6 +15,12 @@
 .PP
 .B raw
 .B \-qa
+.SH WARNING
+Although Linux includes support for rawio, it is now a deprecated interface. If
+your application performs device access using this interface, Red Hat
+encourages you to modify your application to open the block device with the
+O_DIRECT flag. The rawio interface will exist for the life of Red Hat
+Enterprise Linux 4, but is a candidate for removal from future releases.
 .SH DESCRIPTION
 .B raw
 is used to bind a Linux raw character device to a block device.  Any
@@ -82,8 +88,10 @@
 .SH BUGS
 The Linux 
 .B dd
-(1) command does not currently align its buffers correctly, and so
-cannot be used on raw devices.
+(1) command should be used without bs= option or the blocksize needs to be a
+multiple of the sector size of the device (512 bytes usually) otherwise it
+will fail with "Invalid Argument" messages (EINVAL).
+
 .PP
 Raw I/O devices do not maintain cache coherency with the Linux block
 device buffer cache.  If you use raw I/O to overwrite data already in