Re: Persistent module storage [was Linux 2.4 Status / TODO page]

Jeff Garzik
2000-11-06T13:40:23Z

David Woodhouse wrote:
>
> jgarzik@mandrakesoft.com said:
> > > The sound card allows itself to be unloaded when the pass-through
> > > mixer levels are non-zero. This is reasonable iff ...
>
> > I don't think that is reasonable.
>
> You don't think that it's reasonable for the sound card to allow itself to
> be unloaded when the pass-through mixer levels are non-zero?
>
> So you're suggesting that we should prevent the sound drivers from being
> unloaded at all in that situation?

I am thinking about the bigger picture: You are unloading a driver,
then continuing to use the hardware. To me, that is an undefined state.

> That would also solve the problem, at the cost of still keeping the sound
> module in unpagable RAM all the time.

Oh, the horror!

[jgarzik@rum linux_2_4]$ ls -l drivers/sound/via82cxxx_audio.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 jgarzik jgarzik 27968 Nov 6 03:28
drivers/sound/via82cxxx_audio.o

So you would rather load everybody's kernel down with mixer level /
module persistence gunk... than simply load a kernel module at boot, and
leave it alone?

> With persistent storage, the sound driver is free to reset and initialise
> the sound card hardware upon reload - it's just that it can initialise it to
> the levels which the user had previously set, rather than to the compiled-in
> default levels (which are preferably zero).
>
> Initialising the levels to a default and expecting a user-space app to fix it
> later is not good enough.

The one thing that you and I agree on: It would be nice if the driver
did not init the mixer to a set of defaults, when a preferred set is
available.

However, since simply leaving the driver loaded solves all this mess, it
doesn't seem worth changing drivers to do anything different.

Jeff

--
Jeff Garzik | "When I do this, my computer freezes."
Building 1024 | -user
MandrakeSoft | "Don't do that."
| -level 1