Date: Sat, 17 Dec 1994 18:55:14 -0800 From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM> To: kurto@tiny.mcs.usu.edu (Kurt Olsen) Cc: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: boottime device configuration Message-ID: <199412180255.SAA01031@corbin.Root.COM> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 17 Dec 94 21:12:26 MST." <199412180412.VAA07410@tiny.mcs.usu.edu>
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> >I just had an interesting idea and thought I would get other people >'s opinions. Now that there is the facility to reconfigure devices at >boottime, why not have a /dev_config or something that would hold a list >of device configurations. This was when a person changes how their hardware >is setup, it won't require a full recompile. Plus for people not interested >in recompiling a kernel, it would allow them to change the setup of the >generic kernels. > >I'm not sure how difficult it would be to read a file, but this seems like >it would be quite helpful. I was also thinking of moving many devices out >to LKMs, but from reading Terry's reply, maybe that's not such a good idea. >However if the devices were written correctly (ie. load at boot time and >stay that way,) we could make a kernel that had minimal support and then >provide a bunch of LKMs that could be loaded depending on a person's hardware. >This would look really nice to people who didn't feel quite adept at building >up a kernel. Plus make it really easy to do binary upgrades of different >device drivers. All of the above has been heavily discussed over the past 4 months or so, and the idea is generally the direction that we're headed. It's still unclear if we will be storing the device configuration information in the kernel binary somehow or if it will be stored in a seperate file. Do the latter either complicates the boot code or creates a chicken-and-egg problem for the configuration of the boot device. -DG
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