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From: erik@unislc.uucp (Erik Sean Nolte)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.sysv386
Subject: Re: Loadable device drivers...in V.4?
Message-ID: <1990Oct29.162749.2016@unislc.uucp>
Date: 29 Oct 90 16:27:49 GMT
References: <6681@suns302.cel.co.uk> <35110@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: erik@unislc.UUCP (Erik Sean Nolte,B2D10,5362)
Organization: Unisys, Salt Lake City
Lines: 17

In article <35110@cup.portal.com> ts@cup.portal.com (Tim W Smith) writes:
[ loadable device drivers: ]
>I wish vendors would do this.  It's not even hard.
Fortunately, Unisys already does this with their 6000/10/3x/5x/WS
Unix boxes & Converent's S series machines.  The command to load the
driver is lddrv and it operates roughly as you've described.

>I wish they had pursued it.  I've developed a couple of drivers since
>then, and would have really appreciated being able to test minor changes
>without having to rebuild the kernel.  In my experience, there is a long
>period at the end of a driver project where the thing works well enough
>that it is not crashing the kernel, but it needs various tweeks.  This
>stage would go much faster with a way to load drivers without rebooting
>the system.

I don't write many actual device drivers, but I find the loading feature
especially useful for STREAMS module debugging.