RFC: new utility, kmodpatch

[Luigi Rizzo]

On Fri, Jan 02, 2009 at 04:33:08PM -0700, M. Warner Losh wrote:
> In message: <20090102210133.GA57653 at onelab2.iet.unipi.it>
>             Luigi Rizzo <rizzo at iet.unipi.it> writes:
...
> : The usage model I expect is that people will be told something like this
> : 
> :     To support the BenQ T33 phone on FreeBSD/i386 6.x or 7.x do
> : 	kmodpatch -t "umass.ko umass_devdescrs 4 4 4 2" - - @0 0x4050 0x4a5 0x0101 0x4200
> : 
> :     to support the Asus M2N-Vm DVI MCP67 ethernet on FreeBSD/i386 7.x do
> : 	kmodpatch -t "if_nfe.ko nfe_devs 2 2 s" - - @0 0x10de 0x54c -
> :     and please note TX flow control does not work
> 
> This is a good interface for our users?

i don't know -- in the end it is
    "if you trust me, cut&paste this line into a root shell"
which I believe is simpler than
    "if you trust me, apply this patch, rebuild the kernel and reinstall"

> It is interesting technology, I'm not sure it is the right tool for
> the device aliasing...

> It does require some extra care to introduce duplicate entries into
> the table, or reserve space.

or just overwrite some entry that is unused in your setting,
which again does not work in 100% of the cases but it is very
close to that.

>                               With proper aliasing, we could publish
> one big file that has all the new aliases since the last release and
> there'd be no need to modify the leaf drivers.  With these

in principle yes, though that i expect that the source of info is not
freebsd.org (which often does not have a chance to check/try
whether an alias is correct), but rather mailing lists or other users
which happen to have the same device and tried it.

	cheers
	luigi