[Fwd: Re: [patch] ip autoconfig for PCMCIA NICs]

[Miles Lane <miles@megapathdsl.net>]

This information may be relevant to the (long ago)
discussion of overhauling in-kernel PCMCIA support 
and integrating it with the hotplug framework in the
2.5 development cycle.

IIRC, David Woodhouse was considering spearheading this
work.  Not sure what the current plans might be in this
regard.

	Miles

-----Forwarded Message-----

> From: David Hinds <dhinds@sonic.net>
> To: Andrew Morton <akpm@zip.com.au>
> Cc: lkml <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>, David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
> Subject: Re: [patch] ip autoconfig for PCMCIA NICs
> Date: 19 Oct 2001 20:24:42 -0700
> 
> On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 01:52:54PM -0700, Andrew Morton wrote:
> > 
> > This all works fine.  However it probably breaks something, but the rather
> > unilluminating comment
> > 
> > #ifdef CONFIG_PCMCIA
> >         init_pcmcia_ds();               /* Do this last */
> > #endif
> > 
> > doesn't tell us what.
> 
> I'm not sure about the origin of the comment.  But I can think of one
> reason for starting PCMCIA after at least other device drivers have
> started: since the kernel generally relies on individual drivers to
> announce their resource allocations, there is no way to reliably do
> resource allocation for hot plug devices before non-hot-plug devices
> have enumerated what resources they're already using.
> 
> > Now, every time I try to understand the relationship between socket
> > services, card services, socket drivers and driver services my brain
> > bursts.  Could some kind soul please what these things do, and how
> > they fit together?   Thanks.
> 
> Card services manages a few things for PCMCIA client drivers: hot plug
> event handling, resource allocation, PCMCIA bus configuration, Card
> Information Structure parsing, and some abstractions for talking to
> memory cards.  The Linux version, in the pcmcia_core module, is based
> heavily on the PCMCIA standard documents.  Socket services is the
> PCMCIA standard API for talking to socket drivers; Linux does not
> really implement this API and there's a simpler interface between
> pcmcia_core and socket drivers.  The Linux driver services layer, in
> the "ds" module, supplies a few things for managing device drivers:
> stuff for keeping track of which drivers manage which cards, and which
> logical devices are associated with which cards and drivers.  It also
> provides a user mode pseudo-device for some Card Services functions.
> 
> This stuff is also explained in the intro of the Linux PCMCIA
> Programmer's Guide.
> 
> -- Dave
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