From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 3 02:34:01 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id CAA28216 for hackers-outgoing; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 02:34:01 -0800 (PST) Received: from relay.hp.com (relay.hp.com [15.255.152.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with ESMTP id CAA28206 for ; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 02:33:57 -0800 (PST) Received: from fakir.india.hp.com by relay.hp.com with ESMTP (1.37.109.16/15.5+ECS 3.3) id AA275835225; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 02:33:51 -0800 Received: from localhost by fakir.india.hp.com with SMTP (1.37.109.16/15.5+ECS 3.3) id AA299195067; Wed, 3 Jan 1996 16:01:07 +0530 Message-Id: <199601031031.AA299195067@fakir.india.hp.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD hackers) Subject: Demand loading (Re: FreeBSD, Zappa & PCI) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 03 Jan 1996 09:39:07 +0100." <199601030839.JAA19302@uriah.heep.sax.de> Date: Wed, 03 Jan 1996 16:01:06 +0530 From: A JOSEPH KOSHY Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk >>>>> JW == Joerg Wunsch <<<<< jw> needed only once (at boot time) or rarely (diagnostics code), thus jw> freeing up valuable physical memory for more important things. Well, it would be nice to be able to delay loading a driver till needed. Even nicer would be the ability to unload and reload a driver on the fly. This would allow customers to update portions of the kernel without having to bring the system down, (well, in theory, anyway :)). If I remember right Unixware had the ability to auto-unload an driver which had been inactive for a while, freeing up memory and kernel resources. Not so sure about SCO or Solaris ... Can someone explain why we need ELF or its equivalent for this to be feasible? Koshy