Tyson D Sawyer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Eric W. Biederman wrote: > > > Discussion on the linux kernel maillist has reached consensus, on a > > lot of the design issues. So there is a pretty good chance we will > > see something in the 2.5 kernel. Assuming I can do a decent > > implementation... > > Eric > > > > I read a thread on a kernel list archive between you and H. Peter Anvin. It all > left me a bit confused. It seems that he is arguing that the kernel needs to > call back to the loader to get drivers because you can't load them all with the > kernel. Isn't the current practice to load all possible drivers for boot > devices as an initrd?
On the linux booting linux front there is not really any contention. On how boot protocols should operate, there is quite a bit of contention. A crude summary: H. Peter Anvin x86 BIOS good. Eric Biederman x86 BIOS bad. Where the missing pieces come from is that with the upcoming initramfs a bootloader can build the cpio archive (from which the initramfs is populated) on the fly. In which case there is some advantage on memory starved machines to only load those modules into the initramfs that are actually present, on the machine. For ELF images they can be extended without a huge lot of effort to be able to delete the unused modules (which is just as good). But you are right none of that reflects current practice, but instead what may become current practice at the end of this kernel development cycle. Personally I don't think it is a big deal to support having every hardware driver loaded, because amounts of memory increase exponentially while the amount of drivers appears to increase linearly. But at the same time it is worth thinking about. Eric
