Re: Big Fix for 2.2.1

Gerard Roudier (groudier@club-internet.fr)
Wed, 27 Jan 1999 00:32:21 +0100 (MET)


On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Linus Torvalds wrote:

> On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Gerard Roudier wrote:
> >
> > I suggest to get rid of the bogus readX/writeX stuff in drivers that
> > know what they are doing, until 2.3, as follows:
>
> What?
>
> The "bogus" stuff is correct. That's how readX/writeX were _designed_ to

It is correct if we limit the physical memory to 2 GB minus something on
32 bits systems, and by the way it does a useless masking for i386 arch
on remapped address.

So, it will be correct for me forever since I will never use that amount
of memory on 32 bits Intel, but the useless masking as gone away from my
systems since months.

> work. The design was the correct one: make it easy to port old drivers to
> new architectures - that was what the thing was done for in the first
> place.

I was aware of the care of having old drivers still working and I agree
that I should not have written this stuff was 'bogus'.
Btw, I have posted about this problem weeks (perhaps months) ago but
nobody replied to my post.

> It's the _new_ restrictions that people want to have that are bogus, and
> they are stuff that will wait for 2.3.x. Changing code for 2.2.x is not an
> option.

I was not asking for this stuff to be changed in 2.2, but just suggesting
some simple and quick changes to help users go beyond the 2 GB physical
limit on 32 bit Intel if they really need or just want.
After all, everybody can implement his own patches for his personal use.

Regards,
Gérard.

-
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/