Re: RFC: new utility, kmodpatch

In message: <20090103005040.GA64606_at_onelab2.iet.unipi.it>
            Luigi Rizzo <rizzo_at_iet.unipi.it> writes:
: 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" - - _at_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" - - _at_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"

That's debatable :).  Let's trade this hard to do thing for this thing
that's hard to verify...  It might be progress, but it is only tiny,
incremental progress...

: > 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.

Yea, it is a kludge that works...

: >                               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.

I'd suspect it is freebsd.org, with inputs from the mailing lists...

Warner