Subject: Re: kern/32342: OpenBSD firmware loading framework
To: None <netbsd-bugs@netbsd.org>
From: Martijn van Buul <pino@dohd.org>
List: netbsd-bugs
Date: 12/20/2005 08:06:42
It occurred to me that Iain Hibbert wrote in gmane.os.netbsd.bugs:
> does the cz driver need to keep the image around to fiddle with later or
> is it finished with once the attach is done? (do any drivers need to do
> that?)  Necessarily I'm thinking that during startup there will be nothing
> else competing for the use of the memory.

But firmware loading might take place well after startup. There's USB drivers
which load firmware. Atu(4) comes to mind - and that driver even has a 
considerable amount of firmware, as it holds the firwmare for several hardware
configurations.

So I guess there *is* something competing for the memory. I'd like to avoid
creating a similiar problem like the one we had for umass a while ago, when
trying to insert an USB stick well after system bootup would fail, because
there wasn't a big enough chunk of continuous memory available.

Assuming that memory will be plentiful doesn't sound like a good idea to me.

-- 
    Martijn van Buul - pino@dohd.org - http://www.stack.nl/~martijnb/
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 The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new
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