hdparm and inappropriate ioctl for NVMe device

[Jeffrey Walton]

I'm working on a HP ProBook 640 G4 (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B088KL637G). The machine runs Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS x86_64 fully patched. The machine has a Samsung EVO SSD. The SSD is a NVMe device on the PCI Express bus. According to HP's Maintenance and Service Guide (http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c05956070.pdf), the interface is ATA-7.

Running `hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1` results in:

# hdparm -tT /dev/nvme0n1
/dev/nvme0n1:
 Timing cached reads: 29318 MB in 1.99 seconds = 14752.57 MB/sec
 HDIO_DRIVE_CMD(identify) failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 Timing buffered disk reads: 8206 MB in 3.00 seconds = 2735.13 MB/sec

I believe hdparm should be able to communicate with the device since it uses a standard ATA interface. Reading through the web about the error, one source says the error is due to a down leve hdparm. Cf., https://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/hdiodrive_cmdidentify-failed-inappropriate-ioctl-device/.

Ubuntu supplies hdparm v9.58, but the latest is hdparm v9.62. hdparm v9.58 was released in October 2018, while hdparm v9.58 was released May 2021.

It may be a time to update hdparm.

-----

$ lsb_release -a
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS
Release: 20.04
Codename: focal

$ apt info hdparm
Package: hdparm
Version: 9.58+ds-4
Priority: standard
Section: admin
Origin: Ubuntu
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <email address hidden>
Original-Maintainer: Alexandre Mestiashvili <email address hidden>
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Installed-Size: 251 kB
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), lsb-base
Recommends: powermgmt-base
Homepage: http://sourceforge.net/projects/hdparm/
Task: standard
Download-Size: 94.8 kB
APT-Manual-Installed: no
APT-Sources: http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages
Description: tune hard disk parameters for high performance
 Get/set device parameters for Linux SATA/IDE drives.