Hi,

I think it's time to announce my dummyphp patches to the public.

Dummyphp adds a pseudo hotplug driver which allows to simulate hotplug events 
by writing 0 or 1 to the power files of the PCI slots. It claims all PCI 
slots it finds in the system, so it should not be used if any other hotplug 
driver is present in the system.

Of course it's only a logical remove, the power to the device is still on so 
there is a great chance to destroy important things (hardware!) if you pull 
out a PCI board after disabling it. It's also possible to reactivate the 
board again and work with it as before.

If you are using kernel 2.[56] and drivers using the new driver model it's not 
necessary to unload the driver of the card before, the kernel will tell the 
driver that the adapter has been removed and the driver will release his 
internal stuff. With kernel 2.4 it's not that easy, dummyphp will refuse to 
deactivate an adapter with loaded driver.

It does the same as fakephp.c which is in 2.6 now, with 2 differences:

-it does not remove the slot directory from sysfs on disable
-you can reenable slots

Any feedback welcome. Greg, it would be nice if you push this to Marcelo and 
Linus.

Eike