> Why not do what FreeBSD does and have the f/w be a kld that you can
> unload once you're done with it? It seems to me that this is a bit
> cleaner than an alternate mechanism.

At first sight: yes.

But do I want all kernels that have an active ISDN card (thus need downloaded
firmware) to have LKM support? No, *I* don't. Those cards are pretty common
in outside routers/NATs as fallback for other types of connections.

A sysctl'ble path would work for me (which firmware to load depends on the
protocol spoken by the local exchange). This gives some interesting rc.d
ordering issues, but that can be dealt with later.

Martin