Date: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 21:25:10 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: pechter@lakewood.com Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Higher-level kernel config? Message-ID: <199709192125.OAA05639@usr06.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199709192058.QAA01449@i4got.lakewood.com> from "Bill Pechter" at Sep 19, 97 04:58:12 pm
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> > I'm curious: could there ever be a case where you would not want to > > include a driver for hardware that was actually in your machine? If > > not, then I think dynamic autoconfiguration is the way to go. > > Sure... If you had two hard disk controllers (one for the DOS/OS2/Winxx) stuff > and one for FreeBSD and you wanted to make sure the FreeBSD stuff couldn't > access the dos side... (Say you were working on device drivers or the kernel > and wanted to make your IDE stuff inaccessable to any BSD blowup)... OK, dynamic autoconfiguration with override. Although if a BSD blowup can take out an innocent disk, it's time to fix BSD instead of kludging aroun it this way. 8-(. > I've taken the stuff out of the BIOS, but I occasionally don't use IDE > or sound card drivers or serial drivers on some machines here. A truly dynamic autoconfiguration would only probe and attach these things. It would not load the code for the device proper until an open was requested on the dev node. Admittedly, this is slightly different than not probing or attaching (or, on orderly shutdown, detaching) the thing in the first place. > The sound card stuff is definitely a no-no if you're using the OSS > stuff from 4Front. Drivers which fill the same ecological niche would clearly not be loaded simultaneuosly if things were functioning correctly. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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