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From: "James A. Sutherland" <jas88@cam.ac.uk>
To: Horst von Brand <vonbrand@inf.utfsm.cl>
Subject: Re: Persistent module storage [was Linux 2.4 Status / TODO page]
Date: Mon, 6 Nov 2000 17:01:36 +0000
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Cc: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>, Keith Owens <kaos@ocs.com.au>,
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On Mon, 06 Nov 2000, Horst von Brand wrote:
> [Chopped down Cc: list]
> "James A. Sutherland" <jas88@cam.ac.uk> said:
> > On Mon, 06 Nov 2000, David Woodhouse wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > > It does not know them. Correct. But with persistent module storage, it 
> > > _could_ know them.
> 
> > No it cannot. The desired levels have not been defined: there are no
> > desired levels to determine! Don't tamper with settings you don't need
> > to. 
> 
> The problem (AFAIU) is that if the levels aren't set on startup, they are
> random in some cases.

So set them on startup. NOT when the driver is first loaded. Put it in
the rc.d scripts.

> So you'd have to save (at least) the fact that they
> have been initalized. 

No, you don't.

> Just that would be easy: Set aside a word in the
> kernel, which is set to 0 when booting, and which then gets the value 1
> when the hardware is initialized.

Why bother? Just set the settings *explicitly* on boot, rather than in the
driver itself.

> For more fancy stuff, splitting the
> module into data/code (as I suggested) should do the trick with minimal
> impact on the rest.

No need. Let userspace save it somewhere, if that's needed.


James.
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