Re: Debian Installer - boot floppies

[vinai <vroopcha@mcw.edu>]

On Mon, 6 Mar 2006, Brad Boyer wrote:

> On Sun, Mar 05, 2006 at 02:01:23AM +0100, Marco d'Itri wrote:
> > sven.luther@wanadoo.fr wrote:
> > > I guess we are using udev, but with a devfs-like naming scheme on
> > > top, right ?   I strongly believe that swim3.ko is not hotplug
> > > friendly, or that udev has some trouble with builtin modules, but
> > > i would go for the first case.
> > udev handles built-in drivers without problems, but it can create
> > devices only for drivers which use the 2.6 driver core.
> > If they have not been fixed yet then they are unmaintained or very close
> > to this, and it's about time they are fixed or support is dropped.
>
> I just took a look at swim3.c in the official kernel tree, and it looks
> like it never got updated to use the macio bus system at all. So it is
> a problem with swim3.ko, regardless of the current state of macio in
> hotplug. Someone at one point had some updates for the swim3 driver,
> but I don't remember what the status of that was.

I made a few small changes to the interrupt call routines so the driver
would compile and work, but was informed that those changes were not
SMP-clean.  Then I got lost in work ...

Things have been settling down, so I can get back and try to work on
swim3 and try to clean it up.  I guess my initial question is - would
swim3 really need hotplug capability ?  I can see compiling it as a
module (though not if you're going to use it for a kernel that would
boot a mac with such a controller), and since these devices are fixed
within these macs, do they really need to be hot-pluggable ?  (I am
just approaching things from the "make it as simple as it can be" point
of view.)

And what other currently working/supported drivers use the macio bus,
so I have something to look at for a model ?

vinai