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

James A. Sutherland
2000-11-07T00:44:36Z

On Tue, 07 Nov 2000, Alan Cox wrote:
> > changing settings. If I plug in a hotplug soundcard and load the driver, I do
> > NOT want the driver to decide to set some settings. If I want settings set,
> > I'll do it myself (or have a script to do it).
>
> How about if your stuff is already nicely set up and you remove then replug
> a device,

When I plug it in and modprobe is triggered to load the driver, a script then
runs to feed the device appropriate configuration info. Since the driver only
resets the hardware when it is given the correct configuration, there's no
problem.

> or remove and swap for an identical replacement part. Most people then
> want the configuration preserved.

Hmm... define "identical". I take a laptop home, use a USB NIC to talk to my
LAN at home (using NAT) with a 192.168.* address. Then I take it elsewhere and
use the same model of NIC on the college LAN. All of a sudden, I get myself
banging on the door complaining about misconfigured NICs :-)

> And guess what the simple modutils solution using an ELF section solves that
> too Want to go to default configuration ?
>
> rm /var/run/modules/eth0.data
>
> or wrap it in a GUI.

That sounds a lot like what I've been advocating all along, if that file is
created/updated by a script when eth0's driver is unloaded, then fed back to
eth0 on load.

> [BTW windows gets the USB speaker state management right, seems they store all
> the module persistent data in the registry!]

Yes, that's what we need. A registry, so configuration problems can be
persistent across boots, and even reinstallations... ;-)

James.