Re: User mode drivers: part 1, interrupt handling (patch for 2.6.11)

Peter Chubb
2005-03-14T00:38:48Z

>>>>> "Jon" == Jon Smirl <jonsmirl@gmail.com> writes:

Jon> On Fri, 11 Mar 2005 11:29:20 +0100, Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
Jon> wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> > As many of you will be aware, we've been working on
>> infrastructure for > user-mode PCI and other drivers. The first
>> step is to be able to > handle interrupts from user
>> space. Subsequent patches add > infrastructure for setting up DMA
>> for PCI devices.
>> >
>> > The user-level interrupt code doesn't depend on the other
>> patches, and > is probably the most mature of this patchset.
>>
>> Okay, I like it; it means way easier PCI driver development.

Jon> It won't help with PCI driver development. I tried implementing
Jon> this for UML. If your driver has any bugs it won't get the
Jon> interrupts acknowledged correctly and you'll end up rebooting.

That's not actually true, at least when we developed drivers here.
The only times we had to reboot were the times we mucked up the dma
register settings, and dma'd all over the kernel by mistake...

--
Dr Peter Chubb http://www.gelato.unsw.edu.au peterc AT gelato.unsw.edu.au
The technical we do immediately, the political takes *forever*