On Fri, Jan 11, 2013 at 10:25 AM, Greg KH <gre...@linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 06:02:20PM -0800, Shannon Nelson wrote: >> Most networking dials and knobs can be set using ethtool, ifconfig, ip link >> commands, or sysfs entries, all of which can be driven by startup scripts >> and other configuration tools. However, they all depend on having a netdev >> already set up, and we have some low-level device functionality that needs >> to be sorted out before we start setting up MSI-x and memory allocations.
> Ick, please don't abuse request_firmware() for this type of thing. Yeah, it seemed ugly to me at first as well, but it grew on me as I realized that it does solve a problem in a rather elegant way. While working this up I discussed this with Mr. Woodhouse thinking that as a firmware tree maintainer he'd have a similar reaction, but he actually wasn't opposed to it (David, please speak up if I'm misrepresenting your comments). > What's wrong with configfs? It sounds like it will fit your need, and > that is what is created for. configfs has similar problems as sysfs - the driver needs to create the hooks before it has all the info it might need for some hooks, there is no persistence across reboots, and I don't think it will help for initrd images. Additionally, there would need to be some userland mechanism to notice that the hooks were there and to feed it the startup info. Using a file in the firmware path gives us persistence and a way for the driver to get info before having to set up filesystem hooks. It also gives us a way to get special config info into the boot image. And the whole mechanism already exists, including UDEV hooks that can do more fancy stuff if needed. sln -- ============================================== Mr. Shannon Nelson Parents can't afford to be squeamish. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/