Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 2 May 2006 12:38:11 -0400 | From | "Jon Smirl" <> | Subject | Re: Add a "enable" sysfs attribute to the pci devices to allow userspace (Xorg) to enable devices without doing foul direct access |
| |
On 4/29/06, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com> wrote: > This patch adds an "enable" sysfs attribute to each PCI device. When read it > shows the "enabled-ness" of the device, but you can write a "0" into it to > disable a device, and a "1" to enable it.
What is the rationale for this? Doing this encourages people to write device drivers in user space that probably should be a kernel driver. What are you going to do if two competing apps want to set it to two different states?
An alternate way to fix this problem is to write a device driver that attaches to hardware with PCI class VGA. The driver could then provide a device for each card found. By opening the device you can control who owns and enables it.
We already have a lot of problems with multiple drivers trying to control a single piece of hardware. Adding an "enable" attribute makes it even easier to build conflicting drivers.
-- Jon Smirl jonsmirl@gmail.com - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |