From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Jon Smirl Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2005 15:35:15 +0000 Subject: Re: Rework of request firmware Message-Id: <9e47339105032007357240f9f7@mail.gmail.com> List-Id: References: <9e473391050319200625032789@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <9e473391050319200625032789@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: linux-hotplug@vger.kernel.org On Sun, 20 Mar 2005 14:37:16 +0100, Kay Sievers wrote: > What is the concept of a "post"? Does it receive data for the kernel to > use? What is the overlap with firmware loading here? You just need to > run a program from userspace, right? Post is the commonly used term for what you do to hardware when it is first turned on to get it running. For example the system BIOS posts all the devices in the system. The system BIOS does not post secondary video cards. For these cards when the driver is first loaded I have to run a program that takes the video BIOS ROM on the card and runs it in vm86/emu86. The ROM contents are already exposed in sysfs. If I don't do this the hardware will not respond. The system BIOS does this for you in real mode on the primary card during the boot process. Another time the video BIOS needs to be run is when graphics cards are being resumed. The posting program needs to run in user space and be triggered from the probe function. I initially started to add support for post as a standalone service but received complaints on lkml that the code needed was almost identical to request_firmware(). BenH has also pointed out that the synchronous request_firmware() will deadlock in many cases during the resume process. Video card posting is targeted for early user space when complete. -- Jon Smirl jonsmirl@gmail.com ------------------------------------------------------- SF email is sponsored by - The IT Product Guide Read honest & candid reviews on hundreds of IT Products from real users. Discover which products truly live up to the hype. Start reading now. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_ide95&alloc_id396&op=click _______________________________________________ Linux-hotplug-devel mailing list http://linux-hotplug.sourceforge.net Linux-hotplug-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/linux-hotplug-devel