cvs commit: src/sys/modules/iwi Makefile src/sys/dev/iwi if_iwi.c if_iwi

[Scott Long]

Sergey Babkin wrote:

>>From: Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com>
> 
> 
>>scottl> Scott Long
>>scottl> I guess my vote would be to have a devd mechanism where the kernel
>>scottl> can ask for a module via a particular key, devd maps the key to a file
>>scottl> via its config file and loads it into kernel space as a KLD, and then
>>scottl> the kernel unloads the KLD when its done with it.  For things like isp,
>>scottl> nothing would change, and for iwi you'd get a reliable way of getting 
>>scottl> bits into the kernel that doesn't require messing with the VFS layer
>>scottl> or hard-coding knowledge of the filesystem layout into the driver.
>>
>>Apart from my other objections to kld, I really don't like getting
>>devd involved in this.  devd is a passive listener.  It listens for
>>events and then runs programs.  It is not there to interact with the
>>kernel in synchronous manner.  Everything is queued and there's
>>deliberately no meachanism for a reply.
> 
> 
> A rather stupid question:
> Why not just make the loader able to load an arbitrary
> file? Through a separate call, obviously.
> It's the same thing, only with the linking stage
> skipped, and calling a pointer received as an
> argument of the call instead of the module's load 
> routine. Then the drivers couls just get the path from
> sysconf and happily load whatever files they need.
> 
> -SB

The loader can, that's how the mfsroot.gz file gets loaded
during install.

Scott