From: Marcus Sundberg <mackan@stacken.kth.se>
  To  : ggi-develop@eskimo.com
  Date: Tue, 23 Feb 1999 22:26:28 +0100

Re: Load-time parameters

Brian Julin wrote:
> 
> On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Marcus Sundberg wrote:
> > And how do you set up the sysctl stuff if you don't now the parameters
> > until the driver asks for the values? Don't assume that all chipset
> > drivers take the same parameters.
> 
> I'm not.
> 
> You don't have a "file" for each variable, you just have a "file"
> into which you do stuff like:
> 
> echo "law_bases<binary data>" >  /proc/sysctl/blah/blah/card1_params
> 
> with the binary data being pre-chewed by a userland utility.
> 
> then if you cat /proc/sysctl/blah/blah/card1 you get a list
> of keys and values:
> 
> Param     Bytes  Data
> law_bases 64     <binary data>
> law_sizes 64     <binary data>
> extclk1   32     <binary data>
> 
> And the submodules get their values by looking up keys in that table.
> 
> > > That's a very vague description.  What do you mean?
> >
> > Check out the kgi_subparam stuff in KGIcon to get the general idea.
> 
> The kgi_subparam is what I'm complaining about. Last time I looked there
> was no real param handling in KGIcon, in fact it was just a leftover set
> of access macros that were pretty much broken because they accessed
> a structure, and you cannot specify structure members with insmod.
> Will look again, but I don't recall anyone saying they changed it.

kgi_subparam has been working perfectly since it was introduced ~6
months ago. It has however nothing to do with insmod parameters, it
deals with changing runtime parameters and is implemented as a sysctl
interface in KGIcon, but the same system could easily be adapted to
handle init-time stuff.

//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