Re: [rtl] We are missing a whole point.

[David Schleef <ds@stm.lbl.gov>]

On Mon, Dec 20, 1999 at 08:07:45PM +0200, Alex Dubov wrote:
> > 
> > We are moving that way. Specific suggestions are nice.
> > 
>  I started some preliminary work on the new API. I think to get rid of
> device numbers, in favor of "named" services. I also experimented with
> '/proc' filesystem interface (one has no need to access the disk at all,
> if he only wants to talk to some device drivers; this makes a '/proc' fs
> suitable for the device interchange points, just in style of the new
> 'sysctl' interface; another point is to reduce the kernel-side interface
> of module to the few, well-documented calls).

Look at devfs.  It provides device nodes dynamically on a pseudo filesystem
like /proc.  And keep in mind that you can boot to a ramdisk and create
device nodes as necessary.

>  The best argument here is a story of sound card support on the laptops
> (sound card is the best example of DA card from the normal world).
> Because of some inherent problems in the kernel module mechanism, many
> SC drivers are unable to properly save the context of the respective
> cards, when computer goes to sleep; this renders the use of these cards
> impossible after wake-up, untill a hard reset is performed (of course,
> there is always a possibility, that driver designer had bad card
> documentation).

It is almost always a case of poor hardware documentation or a driver that
does not support the feature.  In the second case, it is simply a matter of
telling the driver to do a hard reset after a wakeup event.  Hot-plug
devices are starting to force these issues in development, making events
such as "device disappeared" or "device had to reset" more commonplace.


dave...

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