From: Marcus Sundberg <mackan@stacken.kth.se>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 09:47:07 +0000

Re: Load-time parameters

Brian Julin wrote:
> 
> Can we get insmod/runtime parameters worked out as one of our first
> orders of business?  As far as I can tell the "KGI managed" system
> for these has been dysfunctional for quite some time.
> 
> There are two major things that are complicating this issue.
> 
> The first is that we have interchangable sub-modules that need to share
> some of the module parameters, but at the same time there are some
> parameters which are pretty much exclusive to certain specific
> chipsets -- so we oscillate between trying to centralize/standardize
> things and letting the sub-modules all go their own separate
> directions.
> 
> The second is that one module may be handling more than one
> hardware instance and must have a set of parameters for each one.
> 
> There are three basic options to choose from:
> 
> 1) Link in symbols as per insmod.  Convenient, parsing is done
> in userspace, but causes the abovementioned headache for sub-modules.
> Also clumsy in that multi-card setups have to collate their
> parameters e.g. law_base=0xf0000000,0xe000000 law_size=0x10000000,0x10000000
>                          ^^ card 1  ^^ card 2          ^^ card 1  ^^ card2
> ...which is especially bad when you want to pass a single card an array
> of values.
> 
> 2) Send in a string per insmod and parse it ourselves.  Better
> for standardization and for multi-card setup, but requires us to
> provide parsing facilities in-kernel and devlop a syntax.
> 
> 3) Use a procfs/sysctl type interface -- insert the module, create
> an instance, tweak the parameters, and then send a command to "activate"
> a peice of hardware.
>
> But will an adequate, interactive, sysctl style interface be
> available on all target OS's?? 

That question should be interpreted as:
"Do all OSes have a way to get input from the administrator?"
And I'm pretty sure the answer is yes. ;)

What you talk about above are implementation details of the
OS/system layer. The driver components just get parameters from the
KGI system layer, and the API to do this should not be dependent on
the implementation on any particular OS.

//Marcus
-- 
-------------------------------+------------------------------------
        Marcus Sundberg        | http://www.stacken.kth.se/~mackan/
 Royal Institute of Technology |       Phone: +46 707 295404
       Stockholm, Sweden       |   E-Mail: mackan@stacken.kth.se