Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 20:29:52 +0100 (BST) From: Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com> To: Michael Robinson <robinson@netrinsics.com> Cc: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: new-bus/newconfig (was: Any success) Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9904122022330.74823-100000@herring.nlsystems.com> In-Reply-To: <199904121442.WAA00575@netrinsics.com>
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On Mon, 12 Apr 1999, Michael Robinson wrote: > Doug Rabson <dfr@nlsystems.com> writes: > >The reason device attachment points are not specified in the config file > >is that I don't think the user should need to care how the hardware in > >their machine works in order to get FreeBSD working. > > There's that "should" again. > > I think people generally agree that it would be nice if users did not need > to know anything about their hardware to get FreeBSD working. I think people > also generally agree that there are many common situations where users will > not, in fact, be able to get FreeBSD working if they do not know how their > hardware works, or if they are not able to communicate that knowledge to the > device configuration code. > > I don't think people generally understand, though, exactly how new-bus > addresses the manual configuration problem, nor do people generally understand > exactly how newconfig handles the automatic configuration problem. > > Could we get specific details on these specific points from the respective > designers? Manual configuration is done via 'probe hints' which are currently prepared by config(8) but could be changed in the future to be loaded from a text file by the bootstrap. A probe hint is just a familiar device instance declaration, e.g.: controller ppc0 at isa? port ? tty irq 7 This information is stored in a very simple 'database' (I use the word extremely loosely) which is bus-architecture neutral. As the ISA bus device is probed, it queries the database for a list of devices to probe. The same database could be easily used for 'device wiring' e.g. making sure the fxp device at pci bus 0, slot 7 is always given unit 0 might look like this (if I implement this feature): device fxp0 at pci0 slot 7 -- Doug Rabson Mail: dfr@nlsystems.com Nonlinear Systems Ltd. Phone: +44 181 442 9037 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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