From owner-freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Nov 21 19:19:03 2005 Return-Path: X-Original-To: arch@FreeBSD.ORG Delivered-To: freebsd-arch@FreeBSD.ORG Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0261B16A42A for ; Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:19:02 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from babkin@verizon.net) Received: from vms046pub.verizon.net (vms046pub.verizon.net [206.46.252.46]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 2F7AF43DBB for ; Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:18:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from babkin@verizon.net) Received: from vms068.mailsrvcs.net ([192.168.1.1]) by vms046.mailsrvcs.net (Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.2-4.02 (built Sep 9 2005)) with ESMTPA id <0IQB00GDQK995231@vms046.mailsrvcs.net> for arch@FreeBSD.ORG; Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:17:33 -0600 (CST) Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 13:17:33 -0600 (CST) From: Sergey Babkin To: Warner Losh , scottl@samsco.org Message-id: <23495346.1132600653230.JavaMail.root@vms068.mailsrvcs.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Cc: arch@FreeBSD.ORG, damien.bergamini@free.fr, nate@root.org Subject: Re: Re: cvs commit: src/sys/modules/iwi Makefile src/sys/dev/iwi if_iwi.c if_iwi X-BeenThere: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: babkin@users.sf.net List-Id: Discussion related to FreeBSD architecture List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:19:03 -0000 >From: Warner Losh >scottl> Scott Long >scottl> I guess my vote would be to have a devd mechanism where the kernel >scottl> can ask for a module via a particular key, devd maps the key to a file >scottl> via its config file and loads it into kernel space as a KLD, and then >scottl> the kernel unloads the KLD when its done with it. For things like isp, >scottl> nothing would change, and for iwi you'd get a reliable way of getting >scottl> bits into the kernel that doesn't require messing with the VFS layer >scottl> or hard-coding knowledge of the filesystem layout into the driver. > >Apart from my other objections to kld, I really don't like getting >devd involved in this. devd is a passive listener. It listens for >events and then runs programs. It is not there to interact with the >kernel in synchronous manner. Everything is queued and there's >deliberately no meachanism for a reply. A rather stupid question: Why not just make the loader able to load an arbitrary file? Through a separate call, obviously. It's the same thing, only with the linking stage skipped, and calling a pointer received as an argument of the call instead of the module's load routine. Then the drivers couls just get the path from sysconf and happily load whatever files they need. -SB