> > It would be nice of the same user-interface could be used to affect driver > configuration early in the boot, so that we can handle diskless boot. > > That would require being able to parse the persistent state from the > kernel. (I don't know if the driver.conf parsing support could be reused > for this.) > > But if we don't have that capability I suspect that driver.conf settings > would remain indefinitely.
I'm not very familiar with diskless boot, so could you please you help me understand the typical usage here? It seems to me that if a diskless client tries to change configuration permanently at runtime, the settings would be attached to config files in the server, so that the next client would pick up the changes. So it seems like the more practical option here would be to use 'dladm -t' (i.e., temporary). If, otoh, you are referring to the usage of obp for setting driver configuration on sparc, it's not clear to me how equivalent functionality is available on intel? Also, my understanding is that the obp method only applies to a very limited set of parameters? However, given that driver.conf is used for non-network driver parameters as well, I don't think driver.conf itself can be completely eradicated even if it is somewhat clumsy to use. Brussels will, at least, provide a cleaner method for network drivers. --Sowmini
