From owner-freebsd-current Tue Oct 22 20:23:32 1996 Return-Path: owner-current Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id UAA26884 for current-outgoing; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 20:23:32 -0700 (PDT) Received: from genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au [129.127.96.120]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id UAA26867 for ; Tue, 22 Oct 1996 20:23:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from msmith@localhost by genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au (8.6.12/8.6.9) id MAA23149; Wed, 23 Oct 1996 12:52:59 +0930 From: Michael Smith Message-Id: <199610230322.MAA23149@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au> Subject: Re: [Fwd: another patch for comment] To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Date: Wed, 23 Oct 1996 12:52:59 +0930 (CST) Cc: julian@whistle.com, current@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <6802.846037969@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Oct 22, 96 07:32:49 pm MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-current@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk Jordan K. Hubbard stands accused of saying: > > > here's another patch I'd like to add. > > > > hopefully I can also eventually add a '/stand/selftest' > > I think this is starting to get a little silly, all these "fall back" > paths to invoke as init. Rather than add another, for a total of 5 > init possibilities now, wouldn't a more general mechanism be > warranted? Otherwise, I see no reason why you couldn't just keep this > on your own branch - it doesn't look like something of truly general > utility. Something like '/stand/selftest' is something that you want to boot _instead_ of a kernel, not after the kernel is loaded. Then you could add code to device drivers conditionalised on SELFTEST when and as it was desired. The whole 'loadable device driver' thing is looking more and more like it will require a significant restructuring of the basic device driver architecture to do it "right". I think this is at least partly why nobody has taken it on - it's a Big Job Of Work. One of these changes would be a set of mandatory entrypoints : probe, attach, etc. One of those could easily be 'selftest'. > Jordan -- ]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer msmith@gsoft.com.au.au [[ ]] Genesis Software genesis@gsoft.com.au [[ ]] High-speed data acquisition and (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496 [[ ]] realtime instrument control. (ph) +61-8-8267-3493 [[ ]] Unix hardware collector. "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick [[