Date: Wed, 3 Mar 2004 19:58:29 +0100 (CET) From: Cordula's Web <cpghost@cordula.ws> To: jorn@wcborstel.nl Cc: stable@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Standard sbc and pcm support in GENERIC kernel? Message-ID: <20040303185829.4F8EB4086B@fw.farid-hajji.net> In-Reply-To: <20040303184634.8ADD9170D4@www.wcborstel.nl> (jorn@wcborstel.nl) References: <20040303184634.8ADD9170D4@www.wcborstel.nl>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> >Getting sound to work is as easy as: > > - kldload snd_driver > > - cat /dev/sndstat > > - kldunload snd_driver > > - kldload snd_pcm > > - and sometimes, kldload snd_<driver from sndstat> > > - edit /boot/loader.conf to autoload the correct driver > > Might be handy to add these things to the handbook. As said, a knob in /etc/rc.conf could be useful, and if only to document this and add these calls to the default boot sequence. > >I'd prefer to see sound left out of the GENERIC kernel. Not all > >soundcards are supported by pcm, or by sbc, or by csa, or by gus, and > >putting all of those into the kernel will add quite a bit of bloat. > >GENERIC should support the most common hardware, not everything under > >the sun. > > I believe a soundcard is quite common hardware these days (on desktop > machines, that is). And maybe not all soundcards are supported by pcm, > sbc, csa or gus, but I think many of them are. For instance, my on-board > sound chip in my ASUS board is perfectly fine detected by FreeBSD, but > for Windows (both 98 and XP) I need to install drivers for it. KLD modules are perfectly sufficient for this, esp. if they are loaded at boot time. There's not difference between statically built drivers, and kld modules (if you disregard securelevel issues for a moment). The problem is getting those modules to load at boot time _by_default_. Novices shouldn't IMHO be exposed to this. It would be great to be able to _disable_ sound in rc.conf, rather than forcing newbies to _enable_ sound in some dark, still unknown places. > As for important servers, I wouldn't let an important server run on the > GENERIC kernel. I would build one myself, and pull out some unwanted > things to grab some performance. So one can easily get rid of sound > support as well. Is a GENERIC kernel considered harmful on production servers? Unless you want very special features, there is nothing wrong with running GENERIC, even on huge machines with heavy load. You may need to tune some sysctl variables like, say, shared memory, semaphores or number of file descriptors, but besides this, GENERIC kernel would work reasonably well. Of course, YMMV. > Thanks for sharing your opinion though. > > Jorn -- Cordula's Web. http://www.cordula.ws/
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20040303185829.4F8EB4086B>