hi all, i'm doing an embedded remote firewall/router and "management" system (preliminary approval's been obtained to release the code as GPL at some point) using a pc-engines alix6f2 (AMD Geode LX800), and have had to make the rather unfortunate and necessary decision to custom-compile the kernel. we picked 3.9.6 because that was what was available at the time, and was found to work [but can upgrade to latest debian/testing kernels]
the custom-compiling was done because the board needs GPIO control of an arduino-style relay in order to control the power to a larger x86 motherboard and its associated equipment. the problem is that nobody has really said exactly why CONFIG_GPIO_SYSFS has been disabled by default in debian kernels. in fact if you look as far back as the 2.6.32-squeeze48 linux kernel, the orion5 and kirkwood boards have it "enabled", but nothing else does. this would not _be_ a problem if there was not some concern here about the use of "non-standard" i.e. "non-stock" software. the discussion and investigation surrounding this issue is here: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=706476 leaving out the historical issue (which is that the older 2.6 GPIO module worked because it bypassed SYSFS_GPIO) if there is an objection that SYSFS_GPIO is "unsafe" for general use on e.g. x86 systems, that objection is "overruleable" shall we say on the basis that *explicit* action has to be taken in order to access GPIO. chances of that happening randomly and accidentally are extremely slim, and in each GPIO module "unsafe" GPIO access is disabled by a hard-coded unalterable mask _anyway_. in the case of the CS5535 kernel module for example access to the shared NMI-IRQ/GPIO line is explicitly banned. can i possibly ask: 1) could someone please give a reasonable explanation / justification why CONFIG_GPIO_SYSFS is currently disabled by default 2) do those reasons in (1) still apply now (for the current testing linux kernel, at the time of writing i believe that's 3.11) 3) if they do not apply, please could i request that CONFIG_GPIO_SYSFS and CONFIG_GPIO_CS5535 be enabled by default in the 486 kernel builds (*nods to ben*) because we're a bit stuffed without them [1] many thanks, l. [1] i say "stuffed" - we would have to go with a USB-based relay solution, at a cost of around £30 from e.g. robot-electronics.co.uk for the RLY-USB2, instead of a much simpler £5 sainsmart arduino-style solution. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected] Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cac97d1n5dqfaus-3xnttfoygs+zqvnog3iar3dqccvdhzsc...@mail.gmail.com
