usb modems and com devices into GENERIC

[Milan Obuch]

On Thursday 04 January 2007 04:34, M. Warner Losh wrote:
> In message: <20070103205841.GB85200 at roadrunner.q.local>
>
>             Ulrich Spoerlein <uspoerlein at gmail.com> writes:
> : M. Warner Losh wrote:
> : > I'd like to place the following in GENERIC.  We're getting more and
> : > more questions about these devices that we wouldn't be getting if we
> : > had them compiled in by default.  The really imporant ones are marked
> : > with a '*' below
> : >
> : > device		ucom		# *
> : > device		umodem		# *
> : > device		umct
> : > device		uark
> : > device		ubsa
> : > device		ubser
> : > device		uftdi		# *
> : > device		uplcom		# *
> : > device		uvisor
> : > device		uvscom
> : >
> : > the cost isn's so much, and we can filter them out from the
> : > installation kernel if size is an issue.
> : >
> : > Comments?
> :
> : Hi Warner,
> :
> : why not do it the other way round? Keep them out of GENERIC, but have
> : loader(8) load some of the most used modules (snd_driver!) per default.
> :
> : That way, people can easily disable these (without needing to
> : recompile).
> :
> : I mean, what point is there in the whole KLD infrastructure, if we are
> : going to add every device into GENERIC anyway?
>
> Because the meta-data necessary to know which module to load doesn't
> presently exist in a standardized enough form to make this a viable
> option.  Each driver does its own thing to match the cards, and
> there's no easy way to know that any given usb device needs module
> foo.
>
> Warner
>

Currently, /boot/loader.conf after fresh installation is empty. If it contains 
lines

ucom_load="YES"
umodem_load="YES"
uftdi_load="YES"
uplcom="YES"

you will both get the desired effect and need not to expand included device 
list. Actually, we could move the other way - instead of having big kernel 
(relatively) with many devices compiled in, we could keep the drivers 
as .ko's and let the loader load them. Install-and-forget-about-it type of 
users will get what it wants, more advanced ones and tweakers could make 
first optimization to some level without need for recompile. I feel this way 
GENERIC could be more universal, in some sense.

That said, I am not against including anything in GENERIC, but currently 
really there is no point building/installing kernel modules - only acpi.ko is 
regularly used in default configuration, to my knowledge.

Regards,
Milan

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