Re: [RFC] removal of legacy cdrom drivers (Re: [PATCH] mcdx.c insanity removal)

[Rene Herman <rene.herman@keyaccess.nl>]

viro@parcelfarce.linux.theplanet.co.uk wrote:

> Aiiee...
> 
> You know, mcdx.c is like a roadkill - just can't stop looking at the thing.

You should try sbpcd.c. I very enthousiastically opened that up one day, 
thinking it might be a nice little newbie project, then after 30 seconds 
gently closed it again and logged out and in of X to make very sure all 
traces of the terminal that showed it were gone.

But...

> How about removing all that stuff instead of keeping the known broken shit
> in the tree?

I do actually still use two of these drives. An actual soundblaster 
connected "sbpcd" drive (which sits in a 386, and given the fact that 
the new init-module-tools didn't compile against libc5 I haven't tested 
it modular there yet -- builtin it doesn't work) and a "Pro Audio 
Spectrum" connected "cdu31a" which does work. Most of the time. When the 
timing is just right, it even allows me to mount cd-roms:

root@5vd5:~# uname -r
2.6.5
root@5vd5:~# lsmod | grep cdu31a
cdu31a                 24944  1
cdrom                  34112  1 cdu31a
root@5vd5:~# mount | grep cdrom
/dev/sonycd on /mnt/cdrom type iso9660 (ro,noexec,nosuid,nodev,check=r)
root@5vd5:~# ls /mnt/cdrom/
cd.id  install.exe  lecdemos  readme.doc  resource  support

> If you are OK with that (and nobody on l-k stands up and claims that they want
> it alive and *claims* *that* *right* *fucking* *NOW*) I'll send you a patch
> putting these buggers out of their misery.

Hope this qualifies a bit. Must say that one of the things I appreciate 
about Linux is that all this old gunk I have lying about (in fact, still 
drag in from time to time) is actually supported. Or "supported".

Would it be good to have a CONFIG_LEGACY alongside CONFIG_EXPERIMENTAL 
and friends and dump all this crap into drivers/legacy/cdrom, where it 
wouldn't distract serious people?

Rene.