Date: Wed, 22 Sep 1999 08:45:30 -0600 From: Wes Peters <wes@softweyr.com> To: Warner Losh <imp@village.org> Cc: FreeBSD Hackers List <freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: what is devfs? Message-ID: <37E8EB8A.E20E5C44@softweyr.com> References: <37E88112.8545CFEF@softweyr.com> <37E81109.E7612259@softweyr.com> <19990921000009.54622@hydrogen.fircrest.net> <19990920231629.26284@hydrogen.fircrest.net> <Pine.BSF.4.05.9909202321540.22714-100000@home.elischer.org> <199909212040.OAA27457@harmony.village.org> <199909220150.TAA29152@harmony.village.org> <199909220728.BAA31772@harmony.village.org>
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Warner Losh wrote:
>
> In message <37E88112.8545CFEF@softweyr.com> Wes Peters writes:
> : Interrupt, DMA, I/O settings, promiscuous operation, baud rate and parity,
> : etc. Any little thing a device driver might desire...
>
> I had been specifically thinking of things more obscure like the
> WNETID for wavelan cards, the frequency ranges for the bktr cards, the
> frequency pattern for an ibm lan entry driver I never finished, the
> preferred media type for ethernet drivers, the calibrated frequency
> for clock boards/parts, the mixer settings from sound drivers, etc,
> etc, etc.
>
> These things are closely related to the more prosaic things like I/O
> range, IRQ, DRQ, etc. I'm not sure that the differences between
> "configuration" data and other attributes not necessarily common to a
> bus are significant enough to warrant special treatment. I gotta find
> some time to get into this more deeply. Maybe after pccard has grown
> cardbus support :-).
>
> And the sysctl mechanism might not be a bad one to make persistant.
> However, there are some issues with having multiple instances of
> sysctls that would need to be generically solved at the same time.
I'm sure you can handle the easy stuff, now that I've done the genius
part. ;^)
> There, the whole problem of the persistant parts of devfsd has been
> reduced to basically /etc/rc.sysctl which should make the "we don't
> need devfsd to do persitance" folks happy. :-)
Yup. All we have to do is make the API modify the driver AND the database,
and load the database so the drivers can get at the info a boot time. This
design work is kinda fun, I wonder if I can get somebody to pay me to do
it? Nah, they always end up wanting me to write code (i.e. WORK) for a
living.
--
"Where am I, and what am I doing in this handbasket?"
Wes Peters Softweyr LLC
wes@softweyr.com http://softweyr.com/
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