Re: PNP Bios

Re: PNP Bios

[Thomas Hood]

Alan Cox wrote:
> I plan to submit PnP BIOS to 2.5 but not 2.4 - it needs more study yet

I presume that the aspect of the driver that needs more study
is the interface between the pnpbios driver and other device
drivers.

The pnpbios driver the -ac kernels had a driver registration
interface.  Is that the only or the best way for drivers to
use the PnP BIOS?  Given that a lot of drivers already use
the isa-pnp driver, wouldn't it be cleaner if the pnpbios
driver were integrated with the isa-pnp driver, such that
isa-pnp could used pnpbios as a slave to do its configuration
dirty work?  Then there would be just one pnp interface for
all drivers to use.

However we decide to make pnpbios services available to
drivers, we have smp and hotplug issues to sort out too.

Although it may be appropriate for us to think more about the
latter issues, I see no reason why we shouldn't put the core
functions of the pnpbios driver (viz., the PnP BIOS interface
functions), along with the /proc interface to these, into 2.5
right away.  For that matter, they can go into 2.4 as well.
They have been pretty well tested by now.  This would at least
allow us to use lspnp and setpnp to control the way the
PnP BIOS configures our machines.  Mark the driver
"experimental" if you like, but please put it in.

Thomas

Re: PNP Bios

[Alan Cox]

> The pnpbios driver the -ac kernels had a driver registration
> interface.  Is that the only or the best way for drivers to
> use the PnP BIOS?  Given that a lot of drivers already use

Its longer term hopefully how all driver interfaces barring the 
real legacy ISA crud will work. We need to make them all look as
similar as possible.

> However we decide to make pnpbios services available to
> drivers, we have smp and hotplug issues to sort out too.

Yep - thats why the docking thread is there. Now we can make it
useful.

> PnP BIOS configures our machines.  Mark the driver
> "experimental" if you like, but please put it in.

Submit it to Linus. I'd agree

PnP BIOS driver -- Can it go in?

[Thomas Hood]

On Wed, 2001-11-28 at 11:10, Alan Cox wrote:
> Submit it to Linus.

Linus and Marcelo: Would either of you accept a patch to add
the pnpbios driver with /proc interface, so we can use lspnp
and setpnp to control how PnP BIOS configures devices?

This driver was in 2.4.x-acy for quite a long time and I
believe that the basic functionality was pretty well
debugged and tested.

Thomas Hood

Re: PnP BIOS driver -- Can it go in?

[Marcelo Tosatti]

On 28 Nov 2001, Thomas Hood wrote:

> On Wed, 2001-11-28 at 11:10, Alan Cox wrote:
> > Submit it to Linus.
> 
> Linus and Marcelo: Would either of you accept a patch to add
> the pnpbios driver with /proc interface, so we can use lspnp
> and setpnp to control how PnP BIOS configures devices?
> 
> This driver was in 2.4.x-acy for quite a long time and I
> believe that the basic functionality was pretty well
> debugged and tested.

Initially yes... it all depends on the state of the driver of course.

Re: PnP BIOS driver -- Can it go in?

[Aaron Tiensivu]

> > Submit it to Linus.
> Linus and Marcelo: Would either of you accept a patch to add
> the pnpbios driver with /proc interface, so we can use lspnp
> and setpnp to control how PnP BIOS configures devices?

[AOL mode on]
Me too. It makes configuration of my Thinkpad 600e's much more tolerable and
sane.
[/AOL]

Re: PnP BIOS driver -- Can it go in?

[Thomas Hood]

Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> Initially yes... it all depends on the state of the driver of course.

The driver is in a fine state for the purposes of the 
lspnp and setpnp utilities.

I'll prepare a patch RSN.

--
Thomas Hood