John W. Linville wrote:

Support for HDIO_DRIVE_CMD and HDIO_DRIVE_TASK in libata.  Useful for
supporting SMART w/ unmodified smartctl and smartd userland binaries.

Not happy w/ loop after failed ata_qc_new_init(), but needed because smartctl
and smartd did not retry after failure.  Likely need an option to wait for
available qc?  Also not sure all the error return codes are correct...

YYYYYYYYYYEeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!

I know it's a bit kludgy and does not really fit the philosophy of libata but it works and it lets 
me keep an eye on my drives *now*.

Although just for good measure I'll probably unmount and stop my raid arrays before I use it on the 
disks. Whats it like for locking on a busy system?

Regards,
Brad