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Date: Sun, 08 Apr 2001 13:38:08 +0200
From: Michael Reinelt <reinelt@eunet.at>
Organization: netWorks
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To: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>
CC: =?iso-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard?= Roudier <groudier@club-internet.fr>,
        Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: Multi-function PCI devices
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Jeff Garzik wrote:
> 
> > Another (design) question: How will such a driver/module deal with
> > autodetection and/or devfs? I don't like to specify 'alias /dev/tts/4
> > netmos', because thats pure junk to me. What about pci hotplugging?
> 
> pci hotplugging happens pretty much transparently.  When a new device is
> plugged in, your pci_driver::probe routine is called.  When a new device
> is removed, your pci_driver::remove routine is called.

Thats clear to me. But the probe and remove routine can only be called
if the module is already loaded. My question was: who will load the
module? (I'll call it 'netmos.o')

devfs in its standard configuration knows about loading serial.o or
parport.o when /dev/tts/* or /dev/parport/* is accessed. Some other
module loads are triggered by module dependancies (e.g. lp.o requires
parport.o)

If I do a 'modprobe serial', how should the serial driver know that the
netmos.o should be loaded, too?

There is a file called 'modules.pcimap', which contains modules for
specific PCI devices. That's how hotplugging could detect that there's a
netmos card and that netmos.o should be loaded. That looks clean to me,
but I'm not shure if this sort of PCI hotplugging is already
implemented.

bye, Michael

-- 
netWorks       	                                  Vox: +43 316  692396
Michael Reinelt                                   Fax: +43 316  692343
Geisslergasse 4					  GSM: +43 676 3079941
A-8045 Graz, Austria			      e-mail: reinelt@eunet.at
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