Bug#396193: [Yaird-devel] Bug#396193: Patch to recognize openfirmware drivers

[Jonas Smedegaard]

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Sven Luther wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 10:53:37PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
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>> Sven Luther wrote:
>>> On Fri, Mar 30, 2007 at 09:24:25PM +0200, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>>>> Bernhard R. Link wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Attached patch teaches yaird to recognize openfirmware devices,
>>>>> as they appear in linux 2.6.18.
>>>>>
>>>>> This makes my sparc with sbus devices work again with yaird and in
>>>>> theory it should also make it not choke on ebus devices the bugreport
>>>>> I'm sending this to is about.
>>>> Thanks alot for your work - and sorry for my late response.
>>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, it seems to me that your patch will interfere with
>>>> PowerPC machines, that also use OpenFirmware. Looking briefly on a
>>>> Macintosh at hand, it contains devspec files in sysfs too, but not the
>>>> modules.ofmap that your patch seems to rely on.
>>>>
>>>> Could anyone check if I am right - and perhaps figure out a sane way to
>>>> deal with the different openfirmware implementations?
>>> The future of powerpc plateform drivers, with the move to arch=powerpc, and
>>> everything relying on an openfirmware-like device tree, is to go the
>>> plateform_of way. This does include the powermacs, which is the primary
>>> development plateform of benjamin herrenschmidt, among others, who was
>>> involved in the openfirmware driver move.
>>>
>>> As thus, adding support for the openfirmware plateform devices is needed to
>>> continue to have hotplug support for those devices, and vital for yaird.
>> Thanks for the detailed info, Sven.
>>
>> I did notice shortly after firing off that email that indeed the ofmap
>> file is present for a 2.6.18 kernel, only not for that ancient 2.6.8
>> kernel I was looking at at first.
>>
>> This raises another question: It seems to me that this patch will fail
>> for kernels that offers devspec in sysfs but does not ship with a
>> modules.ofmap file.
>>
>> If so, applying this patch will cause yaird to stop working on older
>> kernels that worked before.
> 
> Well, you may disagree, and we almosted fighted in erkelenz over this, but if
> someone is using an ancient kernel not in current etch or lenny, then he
> should use the version of yaird which goes with it, namely the sarge version.
> 
> It is very probably that the absence of this patch will break yaird in lenny
> even, or also the etch upgrade kernel at mid-live we have planned.
> 
> Furthermore, ancient kernels are no more supported in debian/etch anyway, due
> to udev if nothing else, and the upgrade path does recomend upgrading the
> kernel early on.
> 
> So, if you want to use a pre-etch kernel, then you should use the accompanying
> pre-etch yaird.

I do not want to argue with you the relevancy of
non-distributor-provided kernels.

I do want to understand if in fact applying this patch causes problems
for any kernels that works without this patch.


Thanks for your help.


 - Jonas

- --
* Jonas Smedegaard - idealist og Internet-arkitekt
* Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

 - Enden er nær: http://www.shibumi.org/eoti.htm
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