Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 2 Jan 2002 17:13:14 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 2 Jan 2002 17:12:55 -0500 Received: from ns.suse.de ([213.95.15.193]:5388 "HELO Cantor.suse.de") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Wed, 2 Jan 2002 17:12:45 -0500 Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2002 23:12:44 +0100 (CET) From: Dave Jones To: "Eric S. Raymond" Cc: Alan Cox , Linux Kernel List Subject: Re: ISA slot detection on PCI systems? In-Reply-To: <20020102164757.A16976@thyrsus.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Wed, 2 Jan 2002, Eric S. Raymond wrote: > > > Consider the lives of people administering large server farms or ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > > > clusters. Their hardware is not necessarily homogenous, and the > > > ability to query the DMI tables on the fly could be useful both > > > for administration and automatic process migration. > > Given that 'dmidecode' works fine in those circumstances, that's still > > not a convincing argument imo. > But only for people and programs with root privileges. ^^^^^^ Someone building a new kernel for a box (ie administrator) will have root priveledges. Though running 'make guessconfig' or whatever as root would suck. What Alan suggests (ripping the necessary bits out of dmidecode and making a setuid program) sounds better, as long as someone audits it afterwards. > then, on whether we want to insist that all software doing hardware > probing must have root privileges to function. probing isa isn't pretty. which is why we don't have anything as nice as /proc/bus/pci. The pnpbios support goes a little towards this, but only detects PNP cards obviously. Ye olde ISA is all but invisible to /proc As we get the devicefs in 2.5 fleshed out, hopefully such things will come in time for the older busses like PNPISA & EISA > There is already stuff in /proc that seems to be there for precisely this > reason. So /proc/dmi would hardly be a violation of norms. Just because its a shitbucket, doesn't mean we should keep adding to it. It's become the dumping ground for so much crap that just doesn't need to be there. -- | Dave Jones. http://www.codemonkey.org.uk | SuSE Labs - 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/