According to Mike Smith: > This is actually a major defect in the newconfig design; if the kernel > doesn't already know about a device when it is built, it can never > support it.
That would be so lovely, with a DEVFS too: Plug your Cool card into your pcmcia slot, and get the message on the sytem console that an unknown pcmcia card called "Cool", made by CoolMakers, Inc. Damn... not even a generic driver wanted this card. Pull the card out and go for the web: # ftp ftp.a.cool.thing.com ftp> get cool.tgz --> Downloading file. ftp> quit --> Good bye. # install_driver cool.tgz --> Adding driver to driver database, and installing /modules/cool.ko! And at this point the kernel has not loaded the driver, but just been told there's a new driver around and for what cards and vendors it works, etc. This is done by a library call, or something, which does adds the driver to the database, and a syscall to update the kernel's already loaded database, or to get it to reload the database. Plug the card in again, and the kernel loads in cool.ko and probes the card, and created a /dev/cool, and everything works just fine. No reboot, no recompile, nada. *purr* /Mikael To Unsubscribe: send mail to majord...@freebsd.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
