Date: Wed, 2 Dec 1998 18:53:46 -0700 (MST) From: "Justin T. Gibbs" <gibbs@narnia.plutotech.com> To: Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Cc: current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: KLD - what's the idea? Message-ID: <199812030153.SAA57786@narnia.plutotech.com> In-Reply-To: <199812022251.OAA08915@dingo.cdrom.com>
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In article <199812022251.OAA08915@dingo.cdrom.com> you wrote: >> > > What are the (rough) plans for this mechanism? >> > >> > Convert the entire kernel into an aggregation of KLD modules. Stick >> > them together in interesting and versatile ways (eg. at build time to >> > create a monolithic kernel, or at runtime to load/unload drivers, etc.). >> >> ... unload probe/init code when it is no longer needed. > > This is actually almost totally farcial; the only modules for which > unloading probe/init code makes any sense are ISA drivers, and even > then only ISA drivers that don't support PCCARDs. The probe and attach code for certain drivers is quite complex. The Adaptec and NCR drivers do some amount of run-time firmware patching. Several drivers carry along large firmware images that serve no purpose once the image is loaded into the device. These situations would certainly benefit from the ability to either selectively swap out portions of a module (ala AIX) or to unload unused segments and reload them on the fly during further probe/attach requests (ala Linux). -- Justin To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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