From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262581AbTKRNh0 (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Nov 2003 08:37:26 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262686AbTKRNh0 (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Nov 2003 08:37:26 -0500 Received: from mail1.btignite.se ([194.213.69.45]:38929 "HELO mail2.btignite.se") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id S262581AbTKRNhY (ORCPT ); Tue, 18 Nov 2003 08:37:24 -0500 Message-ID: <3FBA2091.70602@lanil.mine.nu> Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 14:37:21 +0100 From: Christian Axelsson User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5) Gecko/20031117 Thunderbird/0.3 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Maciej Zenczykowski CC: Pontus Fuchs , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Announce: ndiswrapper References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Maciej Zenczykowski wrote: >>Pontus Fuchs wrote: >> >>>Hi, >>> >>>Since some vendors refuses to release specs or even a binary >>>Linux-driver for their WLAN cards I desided to try to solve it myself by >>>making a kernel module that can load Ndis (windows network driver API) >>>drivers. I'm not trying to implement all of the Ndis API but rather >>>implement the functions needed to get these unsupported cards working. >> >>Sounds like a plan! > > > Definetely agree - question though, are you loading these drivers into > ring 0 (kernel space)? As far as I know linux only supports ring 0 > (kernel) and 3 (userspace). However this would seem to be the perfect > place to load the binary modules in ring 1 (or even userspace if that was > possible...). I can't say I trust any binary only and/or windows driver > to not make a mess of my kernel :) actually the driver may actually be > errorless - it's just designed for a different operating system and thus > some unexplainable misshaps could easily happen... There are development of a userspace driver API I think but I dont know the state of it nor the speed impacts. > While we're at it, loading binary only modules into ring 1 would probably > also be a good idea for the NV module et al. Although I have no idea how > hard it would be to make ring 1 function (and whether there actually is > any point to doing it in ring 1 instead of ring 3 with iopl/ioperm anyway) > and how big the performance penalty for non-ring 0 would be... See above. -- Christan Axelsson smiler@lanil.mine.nu