Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1751434AbWCWJZV (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:25:21 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1751438AbWCWJZV (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:25:21 -0500 Received: from mta2.cl.cam.ac.uk ([128.232.0.14]:43234 "EHLO mta2.cl.cam.ac.uk") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751434AbWCWJZT (ORCPT ); Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:25:19 -0500 In-Reply-To: <20060323004006.GQ15997@sorel.sous-sol.org> References: <200603131802.k2DI2nv8005665@zach-dev.vmware.com> <200603222115.46926.ak@suse.de> <20060322214025.GJ15997@sorel.sous-sol.org> <4421EC44.7010500@us.ibm.com> <20060323004006.GQ15997@sorel.sous-sol.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v623) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Message-Id: Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: Jyothy Reddy , Christopher Li , Leendert van Doorn , Kip Macy , Linux Kernel Mailing List , Jan Beulich , Anne Holler , Linus Torvalds , Xen-devel , virtualization@lists.osdl.org, Ky Srinivasan , Anthony Liguori , Wim Coekaerts From: Keir Fraser Subject: Re: [RFC, PATCH 5/24] i386 Vmi code patching Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:25:28 +0000 To: Chris Wright X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.623) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1121 Lines: 28 On 23 Mar 2006, at 00:40, Chris Wright wrote: >> Would you have less trouble if the "ROM" were actually more like a >> module? Specifically, if it had a proper elf header and symbol table, >> used symbols as entry points, and was a GPL interface (so that ROM's >> had >> to be GPL)? Then it's just a kernel module that's hidden in the >> option >> ROM space and has a C interface. > > Yeah, point is the interface is normal C API, and has the similar free > form that normal kernel API's have. i think this sounds very sane, and an OS-specific interface shim gets around problems such as finding CPU-specific state -- we can get at smp_processor_id() just the same as the rest of the kernel, for example. We could extend the concept of the interface shim we already have -- a set of OS-specific high performance shims, plus a fallback OS-agnostic shim. -- Keir - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/