Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 21:15:04 +0200
From: Wim Van Sebroeck <wim@iguana.be>
To: Sergey Vlasov <vsu@altlinux.ru>
Cc: Samuel Tardieu <sam@rfc1149.net>, Alan Cox <alan@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>,
       linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
       =?iso-8859-1?Q?P=E1draig?= Brady <P@draigBrady.com>,
       Rudolf Marek <r.marek@sh.cvut.cz>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] watchdog: add support for w83697hg chip
Message-ID: <20060913191504.GA2386@infomag.infomag.iguana.be>
References: <87fyf5jnkj.fsf@willow.rfc1149.net> <1157815525.6877.43.camel@localhost.localdomain> <2006-09-09-17-18-13+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <1157817522.6877.46.camel@localhost.localdomain> <2006-09-09-17-38-12+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <2006-09-09-18-28-44+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <20060909214941.GA5192@martell.zuzino.mipt.ru> <2006-09-10-00-11-56+trackit+sam@rfc1149.net> <20060909222718.GB5192@martell.zuzino.mipt.ru>
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Hi Sergey,

> Actually the situation is worse.  This driver pokes at SuperIO
> configuration registers, which are shared by all logical devices of the
> SuperIO chip.  There are other drivers which touch these registers -
> e.g., drivers/hwmon/w83627hf.c handles the hardware monitor part of this
> chip; many other hwmon drivers handle other SuperIO devices.  Hardware
> monitor drivers access the SuperIO config during initialization and do
> not request that port region, therefore loading hwmon drivers when
> w83697hf_wdt is loaded can lead to conflicts.

My opinion: a watchdog device is a special "harware monitoring" device and
thus we should combine the existing hwmon and watchdog code in one driver
where possible.
This will definitely not solve all SuperIO alike problems but it is a first
step towards having a single device driver for every autonomous piece of
electronics.

We can start with the Winbond SuperIO chipsets (Rudolf allready started
this (see his initial mail about Watchdog device classes)).
We should also change/convert the /dev/temperature setup in the watchdog
drivers to a hwmon-alike setup. I will definitely do this for the pcwd 
drivers. And secondly we should define how we handle "temperature panic's"
because there we still have differences between the watchdog drivers.

Greetings,
Wim.

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