Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2017 09:57:36 +0000 From: Colin Percival <cperciva@tarsnap.com> To: "O'Connor, Daniel" <darius@dons.net.au> Cc: "freebsd-current@freebsd.org" <freebsd-current@freebsd.org>, Andrew Turner <andrew@fubar.geek.nz>, Baptiste Daroussin <bapt@FreeBSD.org> Subject: Re: RFC: Removing hpt* drivers from GENERIC Message-ID: <010001606e350447-ea112c5b-2179-4828-9899-f33e704aa131-000000@email.amazonses.com> In-Reply-To: <F3768FBF-A2DF-47CE-97E6-1646C7B6BE06@dons.net.au> References: <0100015f557d9cd2-098d2e99-d4c4-45ce-90bf-47b76455a6de-000000@email.amazonses.com> <F3768FBF-A2DF-47CE-97E6-1646C7B6BE06@dons.net.au>
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On 10/25/17 15:56, O'Connor, Daniel wrote: >> On 26 Oct 2017, at 08:13, Colin Percival <cperciva@tarsnap.com> wrote: >> [Proposal for removing hpt* drivers since hpt27xx and hptnr take a long >> time to in DEVICE_PROBE.] > > Seems sensible to me, but also worth contacting the blob authors if > possible and asking them what gives (and if they can fix it). Turns out that they were indeed able to fix it, with startling rapidity. delphij@ committed r325683 (MFCed as r32600[56]) which reduces the time spent in these DEVICE_PROBE routines from ~150 ms down to ~37 *us* on my laptop. So my immediate desire for faster booting has been satisfied with regard to these drivers. I know some people (CCed) were enthusiastic about removing these from GENERIC on the basis that we shouldn't have binary blobs in GENERIC; while I'm certainly sympathetic to this, I'd suggest that it should be done by someone who has time to look at the other binary blobs in the tree and formulate a general policy rather than just picking on the hpt* drivers. Unfortunately, that person is not me; I have 12 days left to submit a talk to AsiaBSDCon about my work on profiling the kernel boot (which is how I noticed the slow probing originally) and then a long list of other places to speed up the boot performance. -- Colin Percival Security Officer Emeritus, FreeBSD | The power to serve Founder, Tarsnap | www.tarsnap.com | Online backups for the truly paranoid
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