Re: Device Driver Etiquette

[H. Peter Anvin]

Lee Revell wrote:
> On 6/1/07, Matthew Fredrickson <creslin@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> is it acceptable (although
>> not nice) to simply fix it this way, by disabling irqs while it loads
>> the firmware?
>>
> 
> I would say to just disable IRQs while loading firmware.  Almost every
> server I maintain has some vendor driver which generates a "many lost
> ticks!" message on load.  As long as it's only done at module load
> time it should be fine.
> 
> Of course the best solution is to just get the driver into mainline.
> 

Disable interrupts for 5-10 seconds (see OP)?  You're nuts.

That might be only a minor disaster on an SMP system, assuming IRQ
balancing sends them elsewhere, but on a uniprocessor system you're
effectively shooting the machine in the head.

It should be possible to streamline the code to not hog the stack that way.

	-hpa
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/