On Tue, Oct 09, 2007 at 09:41:47AM -0700, Andrew Vasquez wrote: > On Tue, 09 Oct 2007, James Smart wrote: > > > Why do you prefer request_firmware() vs something over sysfs ? > > > > Does environments like the kdump kernel also have access to data needed > > by request_firmware() ? Assuming the driver-loading parts of the kdump kernel's initrd are the same (udev, bunch of modules, firmwares, etc) as the regular kernel's initrd, this shouldn't be a problem. In the specific case of aic94xx, one needs request_firmware() and associated infrastructure to load firmware blobs into the controller in order to issue any I/O at all. > There's already much in the way of automation and infrastructure > present in supporting the request_firwmare() interfaces (perhaps not > the best of names) which can provide for a level of flexibility beyond > a basic 'soft_port_name' interface. > > Though I don't see why both can't coexist cleanly -- I take it the use > case you are considering is: software recognizes no valid WWPN > available, query via request_firmware() fails, software halts > initialization (rather than fail), and awaits the admin to poke > '0x123456.. > /sys/.../fc_host/soft_port_name', causing a ping to the > driver and continuation of initialization with requested portname? Hmm... could we use such a sysfs attribute to reassign adapter WWNs at arbitrary times? Is that even a good idea? --D - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-scsi" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
