Re: hardware detection using libpci
Joey Hess wrote:
> Glenn McGrath wrote:
> > I guess the card names are handy for the user if all doesnt go to plan,
> > i just left them out because the program didnt _need_ them, and they
> > take the most space.
>
> That's true, it is nice to be able to look at /proc/pci and figure out
> what module to load by hand. But that 80k is pretty nice too.
>
If we have the pci id's we can always get the hardware description later
from a seperate list, but then i guess the information is of less use.
> > From the three modules i looked at there appears to be a few pci ids
> > that arent in libdetects list, so maybe a kernel module based list would
> > be more complete.
>
> Yes, if at all possible we really need to grub this list of of the
> kernel so you don't have to keep maintaining it.
>
I started to setup a sourceforge page for pcidetect, but now am having
second thoughts, im not sure that pcidetect is the best aproach purely
because it is only pci.
> > I noticed that libdetect uses /proc to get the pci ids, it cant do
> > hardware probes to get the ids. Whilst Joey has said that we wouldnt
> > ever ship a kernel without /proc support, i think that having the option
> > to do without /proc is a good thing, if we want to make it easy for
> > users to build a disk with there own kernel then its best is we depend
> > on as few kernel features as possible.
>
> I think we're surely going to depend on some features, probably even
> features that a user wouldn't think to compile into their kernel. I'm
> afraid doing without /proc is going to waste more space than it saves by
> making code try to do without it. Thus, asking users to compile in
> /proc, which _is_ the default, is not undue hardship.
>
> Remember making a kernel for the boot-floppies requires it be built with
> all kinds of unlikely stuff like msdos fs support. That is well
> documented though, and I guess some people have managed to do it.
>
Yea, i now conceed that the linux kernel demands /proc support, there is
no reasonable way of determining which devices the kernel has detected
without /proc.
Im starting to feel that the linux kernel is inflexible and limiting, we
could do better hardware detection but it would need to be a kernel
module, this would be a bad idea as i think we want as much kernel
independence as possible.
Glenn
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