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From: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
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To: "James A. Sutherland" <jas88@cam.ac.uk>
Cc: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com>, Dan Hollis <goemon@anime.net>,
        Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
        Oliver Xymoron <oxymoron@waste.org>, Keith Owens <kaos@ocs.com.au>,
        linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Persistent module storage [was Linux 2.4 Status / TODO page] 
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Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 17:44:08 +0000
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jas88@cam.ac.uk said:
>  Except this isn't possible with the hardware in question! If it were,
> there would be no problem. In cases where the hardware doesn't support
> the functionality userspace "needs", why put the kludge in the kernel?

> If userspace wants to know what settings it set last time, it should
> store those values somewhere.

No. You have to reset the hardware fully each time you load the module. 
Although you _expect_ it to be in the state in which you left it, you can't 
be sure of that. 


jas88@cam.ac.uk said:
> Eh? You just load the driver once, probably on boot, to configure sane
> values. This time round, you use an argument (or an ioctl or whatever)
> to specify the values you want. (cat /etc/sysconfig/sound/
> defaultvolume > /dev/sound/mixer or whatever). After that, the module
> can be unloaded and loaded as needed, without any need to touch the
> mixer settings except in response to *explicit* "set volume" commands
> from userspace. 

Agreed. Where 'whatever' == persistent storage of some form. I care not 
what form that takes. If you can store the data entirely in userspace and 
still have them present at the time the driver initialises the hardware, 
that's fine. 


--
dwmw2


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