James Sutherland writes:
> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Stephen Frost wrote:
> > You only have to reset the device you flash. Sometimes you
> > don't *have* to do that. With SCSI a system can be configured such that
> > you could do the upgrade w/ the machine running and then just reset the
> > device. Similar can be done with IDE, though I've only done it on IDE
> > CDROM drives and not yet with a HD. I do suspect it would work though.
>
> Upgrading firmware would typically be an unusual enough event the reboot
> wouldn't be an issue. In the environments where a reboot is unacceptable,
> a firmware change on-the-fly would probably be unacceptable too...
On the contrary, on important 24x7 systems you don't want to have to
arrange for downtime just to update firmware/microcode. S/390 already
supports this (running Linux under VM and maybe running it in an LPAR
or raw, but I'm not sure) under the name "Concurrent Maintenance of
LIC" (LIC being Licensed Internal Code, the equivalent of microcode or
firmware). This includes processors. As other architectures begin to
play in the five-nines arena, we don't want Linux being left behind on
those architectures just because of some "oh, you can always recompile
the kernel or reboot" mentality.
--Malcolm
-- Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk> Unix Systems Programmer Oxford University Computing Services- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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