From owner-freebsd-stable Mon Aug 31 21:55:10 1998 Return-Path: Received: (from majordom@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) id VAA17700 for freebsd-stable-outgoing; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 21:55:10 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG) Received: from word.smith.net.au (castles231.castles.com [208.214.165.231]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA17695 for ; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 21:55:05 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from mike@word.smith.net.au) Received: from word.smith.net.au (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by word.smith.net.au (8.9.1/8.8.8) with ESMTP id VAA00636; Mon, 31 Aug 1998 21:51:46 GMT (envelope-from mike@word.smith.net.au) Message-Id: <199808312151.VAA00636@word.smith.net.au> X-Mailer: exmh version 2.0.2 2/24/98 To: chad@dcfinc.com cc: mike@smith.net.au (Mike Smith), don@calis.BlackSun.org, stable@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Looking for feedback on xl (3c905/3c905B) driver In-reply-to: Your message of "Mon, 31 Aug 1998 21:44:19 MST." <199809010444.VAA18816@freebie.dcfinc.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1998 21:51:45 +0000 From: Mike Smith Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > > > I guess that depends on what counts as escalation. There's a tradeoff > > between how much you're willing to risk vs. how much work you're > > willing to do to avoid it. As I mentioned, I'm fairly certain that > > Bill mentioned in his announcement about the xl driver that it replaced > > the vx driver for the hardware it supports. > > As I mentioned in mail to Bill, I subscribe to and read the -stable > mailing list. Nothing in it jumped out and said, "after Aug 24, if you > build a new kernel your existing network interface will quit working." > > As you pointed out in earler e-mail, PCI device drivers imply a > mutual exclusion, which means the upgrade was not optional. > > I'm probably thick, but I claim that was not obvious to a > more-than-casual user. No - I think I've not managed to make the point I was trying to, which was that no matter *how* hard you try, people will still not pay attention to things. In this case, it may not have terribly obvious, in others it's been both worse and better. The current situation is a tradeoff, one that keeps the obligations on our voluteer developers down, and balances that with a nominal but non-zero workload supporting people that have missed/not understood/ignored things. The flipside of this is that because we don't have the structure or support in place to produce formalised "heads up" documentation, the user community has to be willing to tolerate a certain degree of surprise. I'm sorry if I managed to accuse you of being thick; that wasn't part of the plan. 8( -- \\ Sometimes you're ahead, \\ Mike Smith \\ sometimes you're behind. \\ mike@smith.net.au \\ The race is long, and in the \\ msmith@freebsd.org \\ end it's only with yourself. \\ msmith@cdrom.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message