Accessing disk controller information

[Sean Sheridan Coleman X5672]

I am writing a program to automatically dump my computer to tape. I
want this program to go out to the controller and find all the disks
that are hooked up to the controller without intervention from the user.
The feature I am looking for is similiar to the one used by format when
it firsts starts up. I have looked for system calls and library functions
to perform this task but have been unsucessful. 

1. Is there a ioctl call that can be made to the controller to get this
info? If so, what is the device that needs to be opened in order to pass
it to the ioctl call. 
If there is no ioctl that will do it, The sun people tell me this is a 
device driver problem, how can I use the tools given to me by the device
drivers to grab the info about the disk.

2. Once I know the disks that I am looking for, I need to get the
partition table, (similar to the results of dkinfo) Again, is there

a ioctl call for this and if so, what device do you send it and if not,
how can I get this information?

Any info will be appreciated

Sean Coleman
NIST
Boulder, CO

coleman at bldrdoc.gov