Date: Mon, 21 Sep 1998 14:49:10 +0930 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@auss2.alcatel.com.au>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: More on the Intel-UNIX standard Message-ID: <19980921144910.T8807@freebie.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <98Sep21.131912est.40335@border.alcanet.com.au>; from Peter Jeremy on Mon, Sep 21, 1998 at 01:19:35PM %2B1000 References: <98Sep21.131912est.40335@border.alcanet.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Monday, 21 September 1998 at 13:19:35 +1000, Peter Jeremy wrote: > On Sun, 20 Sep 1998 00:26:18 -0500, "Pedro F. Giffuni" <pfgiffun@bachue.usc.unal.edu.co> wrote: >> I'm concerned about the SNR in hackers, but I just couldn't resist >> asking if someone was aware and acting on this >> http://www.sco.com/udi/ > > This was mentioned by some Intel marketroids at the recent AUUG'98 > conference. There was a fair amount of discussion at a subsequent > Freenix BOF (which included Greg Lehey and Peter Wemm within the > FreeBSD group and Robert Hart from Red Hat, as well as assorted > users from the Linux community and all the *BSD groups). An interesting observation, BTW, was that there were roughly equal numbers of Linux and *BSD people present. Peter (Wemm) and I also noted that the Linux people seemed to be outsiders, whereas the *BSD people were relatively well known (Peter, can I publish those photos I took on Thursday evening?). > The almost unanimous concensus(*) was that it was a very bad move > and the Freenix community should resist it. I think I was the only > person who felt it had any merit at all. Not so. I saw considerable merit. The Linux people seemed to take the attitude "If we can't get source for it, we won't support it". I tried to make it clear that if it became mainstream (as is quite possible), we'd be shooting ourselves in the foot by ignoring it. There was also considerable confusion about the difference between UDI and I2O. It's a pity we had so short a session: it was definitely a thing that needed more discussion, and we didn't have enough time to do so. For example, at that time nobody was sure whether sources and documentation would be available. We're still not 100% sure what will be available, but it's looking better than it sounded on Friday. > The major problems seen by the group were: > > 1) Binary-only device drivers are a bad idea. It will reduce the chances > of us getting access to the hardware interface specs, and therefore > being able to build a device driver that works. Agreed (I hope you do too). But it looks as if we're going to have sources. > 2) Binary-only device drivers tie the hardware to the processor. This > reduces the portability of (eg) PCI cards. Yes, but this isn't really a Freenix problem. It would adversely affect the vendors of the boards, so you could be pretty sure that drivers will appear for any processor which they consider important. > 3) The difficulty of supporting the kernel services required for a UDI > driver. We don't know yet. > 4) Increased finger-pointing when a device driver fails. Hmm. I don't recall hearing this one, but I arrived a little late. If the interface is clean, it should be relatively obvious where the problem lies. It would certainly be no worse than a panic using softupdates, vinum and cad (to use a hypothetical example). Greg -- See complete headers for address, home page and phone numbers finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?19980921144910.T8807>