Why no modules for IDE chipset support?

Why no modules for IDE chipset support?

[Uwe Bonnes]

Hallo,

why are the IDE chipset support driver not modularized? Is there anything
fundamental that inhibits using these drivers as a modules?

Bye
-- 
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

Re: Why no modules for IDE chipset support?

[Steven Walter]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 11:31:25AM +0200, Uwe Bonnes wrote:
> Hallo,
> 
> why are the IDE chipset support driver not modularized? Is there anything
> fundamental that inhibits using these drivers as a modules?

They are availible as modules.  See "ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support," which is
a tristate.  If you select that as a module, then all the chipsets you
select for support later will be compiled into one large module.

This is probably a bad idea, though, because if you compile IDE support
as a module, you will not be able to mount your root partition if it is
on an IDE disk.

I hope this clears things up for you.
-- 
-Steven
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
			-- George Orwell

Re: Why no modules for IDE chipset support?

[Artur Frysiak]

On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 11:34:45AM -0500, Steven Walter wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 11:31:25AM +0200, Uwe Bonnes wrote:
> > Hallo,
> > 
> > why are the IDE chipset support driver not modularized? Is there anything
> > fundamental that inhibits using these drivers as a modules?
> 
> They are availible as modules.  See "ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support," which is
> a tristate.  If you select that as a module, then all the chipsets you
> select for support later will be compiled into one large module.
> 
> This is probably a bad idea, though, because if you compile IDE support
> as a module, you will not be able to mount your root partition if it is
> on an IDE disk.

This is not true. If you use initrd and load ide-mod, ide-probe-mod and
ide-disk modules on it then you may mount yours root partition.
For eg. we (PLD http://www.pld.org.pl/) have modular ide, scsi, reiserfs and
ext2 (sic!). Small tool called geninitrd make initrd based on
information from /etc/fstab, /etc/modules.conf and other configuration
files.
You may grab geninitrd from ftp://ftp.pld.org.pl/software/geninitrd/

Regards
-- 
Artur Frysiak
http://www.pld.org.pl/

Re: Why no modules for IDE chipset support?

[Tomasz Kłoczko]

On Wed, 25 Jul 2001, Artur Frysiak wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 11:34:45AM -0500, Steven Walter wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 25, 2001 at 11:31:25AM +0200, Uwe Bonnes wrote:
> > > Hallo,
> > > 
> > > why are the IDE chipset support driver not modularized? Is there anything
> > > fundamental that inhibits using these drivers as a modules?
> > 
> > They are availible as modules.  See "ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support," which is
> > a tristate.  If you select that as a module, then all the chipsets you
> > select for support later will be compiled into one large module.
> > 
> > This is probably a bad idea, though, because if you compile IDE support
> > as a module, you will not be able to mount your root partition if it is
> > on an IDE disk.
> 
> This is not true. If you use initrd and load ide-mod, ide-probe-mod and
> ide-disk modules on it then you may mount yours root partition.
> For eg. we (PLD http://www.pld.org.pl/) have modular ide, scsi, reiserfs and
> ext2 (sic!). Small tool called geninitrd make initrd based on
> information from /etc/fstab, /etc/modules.conf and other configuration
> files.
> You may grab geninitrd from ftp://ftp.pld.org.pl/software/geninitrd/

Also for make very small initrd usefull use bsp. This is ~25KB statically
linked shell like program/processor with loading modules, initialize RAID
abilities for using only inside initrd.
BTW .. geninitrd is simple script :)

kloczek
PS. bsp is avalaible on ftp://ftp.pld.org.pl/software/bsp
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
*Ludzie nie mają problemów, tylko sobie sami je stwarzają*
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tomasz Kłoczko, sys adm @zie.pg.gda.pl|*e-mail: kloczek@rudy.mif.pg.gda.pl*