Re: RFC: changes to microcode update driver.

Tigran Aivazian
2003-10-08T09:00:45Z

On Tue, 7 Oct 2003, Dave Jones wrote:
> Assuming that it can be done without the old tools breaking, sounds good
> to me. How will microcode_ctl -i react if you remove the ioctl ?
> Folks _will_ upgrade kernels without updating userspace.

It will fail and Red Hat's startup scripts will show the red [FAILED]
thing which users are always afraid of.

So, I thought initially we should just return 0 in that ioctl (with the
comment that it's going away) and then remove it completely, after
microcode_ctl has been updated.

The patch was almost ready (together with Intel's changes) but I
discovered that microcode module (or in fact ANY module that is loaded
first on my system, 2.6.0-test6) is not unloadable, i.e. usage count stays
at 1 even though nothing is using it. I am not aware of this general
problem being discussed on linux-kernel list, so I thought I should debug
it first (after all, it may be something I am doing that causes it). And
yes my kernel is configured to allow unloading, even forced unloading.

(still feeling ashamed after yesterday's thing with me forgetting to
configure siimage driver and complaining that generic ATA is too slow :)

Kind regards
Tigran