Messages in this thread | | | From | Tim Jansen <> | Subject | Re: LANANA: To Pending Device Number Registrants | Date | Fri, 18 May 2001 10:24:16 +0200 |
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On Thursday 17 May 2001 22:00, Brian Wheeler wrote: > Consider an ID consisting of: > * vendor > * model
Vendor and model ids are available for PCI and USB devices, but I think you can not assume that all busses have them and you dont gain anything if you keep them separate (unless you want to interpret the fields of the device id). In other words I would merge them into a single field.
> * serial number > * content-cookie > * topology-cookie
You need another field that contains a identifier for the bus or the scheme of the device id, because different busses use different formats and you cannot compare them.
You could also merge content-cookie and serial number because you will always to interpret them together.
> I suppose these ID fields could also be used by a userspace tool to > load/unload drivers as necessary.
There is a problem with that idea: you often cannot generate the device id before the driver is available. Things like the content cookie and the serial number must be created by the driver, at least in some cases. For example a PCI ethernet card has a great serial number, its hardware address, but you can only get it after the driver has been loaded.
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