Greg:
Have you followed this thread? We would like your advice.
Basically the situation is this: There's a config option for usb-storage
to select whether or not the driver should allow checking for
write-protection on new devices. The majority of devices support this
check with no difficulty, but there are a few that choke on it. (That's
part of the reason we made it configurable -- the other part is that
earlier versions of Linux performed the check in a slightly different way
which was much more likely to cause problems.)
Now there's a proposal to make this be a module parameter rather than a
config option, so that it can be changed on-the-fly via sysfs without
having to rebuild usb-storage. The bad aspect of doing this is that it
would also eliminate the nice explanatory help message in the Kconfig
file, so the background information wouldn't be so easily available to
users any more.
Suggested actions are:
Move the explanation into the FAQ on www.linux-usb.org (a good
idea in any case). Not least of the advantages is that it would
then be findable by Google.
Change the setting to a module parameter, and _keep_ the config
option -- but make the config option control only the initial
default value of the parameter. Then after a few more kernel
releases get rid of the config option entirely. (This feels
like overkill, albeit only temporary.)
Go ahead and do the complete changeover now (or as soon as the
FAQ is updated).
Leave the setting as a config option and don't add the parameter.
Making the change into a two-step process will minimize the size of each
step. On the other hand, bear in mind that I've only seen two reports of
devices that need a non-default setting (i.e., that don't like
write-protect checking).
What do you think is the best approach?
Alan Stern
P.S.: This raises the issue of documenting a bunch of module parameters
added to the USB subsystem fairly recently. What's the best way to do
this? Add entries to Documentation/kernel-parameters.txt? Put
descriptions on the linux-usb FAQ? Both?
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