The main change is the addition of a new interface structure called "sg_io_hdr". The existing interface structure (called "sg_header") was found to be inflexible requiring the concatenation of raw data together with meta-data in the read() and write() commands.

sg_io_hdr          {new interface structure}
SG_IO              {new ioctl}
direct IO          {present but commented out, see ALLOW_DIO}
procfs output      {new information in /proc/scsi/sg directory}
boot/module parameters  {new}

Up to 64 bytes of sense data can be obtained from the sg_io_hdr interface structure. Also a residual count associated with the data transfer is available (if the lower level driver supports it, if not the residual count will be 0).