I concur with Bill's proposal of a standardized ioctl()
for firwmare downloads.

Having device nodes (ultimately with sufficient access
control) seems like good discipline and not wasteful
at all. I've always viewed having the name as part of
the ifconf ioctl as a kludge. It is inconsistent with
so many other device operations (disks, ttys, etc).
Further, it precludes any access control model other
than suser().

Regards,
	-gww


> -----Original Message-----
> From: tech-kern-owner@NetBSD.org [mailto:tech-kern-owner@NetBSD.org]On
> Behalf Of matthew green
> Sent: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 7:26 PM
> To: Bill Studenmund
> Cc: tech-kern@NetBSD.org; Martin Husemann
> Subject: re: Firmware upload - generalize it? 
> 
> 
>    
>    Why not just use the device? Define a standard ioctl that all 
>    firmware-loading devices support and have one tool that will 
> itteratively 
>    upload.
> 
> there is currently no device node for my "iwi0" card.  seems wasteful
> to add one just for this, rather than pass the name in as part of the
> ioctl (like many other network ioctls, i think..)
> 
> 
> .mrg.
> 
>