Re: PCI hotplug

[Tom Duffy <tom.duffy@sun.com>]

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On Fri, 2004-10-29 at 21:03 -0700, Greg KH wrote: 
> On Wed, Oct 27, 2004 at 11:52:09AM -0700, Tom Duffy wrote:
> > Greg, et. al,
> > 
> > Is there a document out there describing in detail how PCI hotplug works
> > under Linux?
> 
>  From a kernel viewpoint, or from a userspace viewpoint?  For 2.4 or
>  2.6?

kernel, 2.6

> Did you take a look at the acpi pci hotplug driver in the kernel?
> Source is always your best documentation :)

Yes, I started to go through it.  And I was afraid you were going to say
that :-)

> Anything specific you are wondering about?

Well, we are building a system that will have PCI-E hotplug and I need
to make sure that Linux will support it.

I am under the impression that Windows uses ACPI to tell the BIOS to
stimulate the hotplug controller registers.  In general, Linux has
relied less on the BIOS to handle system management, instead
implementing all the bits in the OS.

With proper support from the OS, the driver itself could use interrupts
from the standard hotplug controller in the host's root PCI bridge to
handle hotplug events.

So, what does Linux do?

-tduffy

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