Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 22 Nov 1999 11:44:11 -0500 (EST) | From | Eric Lowe <> | Subject | Re: Hot PCI bus plugging |
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Hello,
> Hi! > > Is it possible to use a PCI or ISA card, that is inserted while > the system is running, without rebooting? > > It looks to me that at system startup time the PCI bus is scanned and > any device that isn't recognized at that stage cannot be used anytime > later. A module that is loaded for the specific card just doesn't find > it, although it's definetly there. So I think the PCI-card driver asks > the kernel about the available cards in some way, but the kernel only > knows about the devices it sees at startup. > > But maybe the kernel can already handle this in a smooth way. Or there > exists some busy developing team for that case where I can join? >
In the current implementation, it (pci.c) scans for all devices at boot time. I don't think it would be a big deal to modify the kernel to support hot-plug devices, though there should probably be a notification mechanism set up so that drivers are notified cleanly when the device has been (or is about to be) removed.
I may work on this if there is enough demand for it. Currently we're (at my company) developing a CompactPCI device, and we have a CompactPCI PC in house that could run Linux... Is anybody else wanting such support?
-- Eric Lowe FibreChannel Software Engineer, Systran Corporation elowe@systran.com
"You can't spell failure without U-R-A." -Dispair.com
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