*BSD News Article 16012


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Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.development
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!ira.uka.de!smurf.sub.org!flatlin!bad
From: bad@flatlin.ka.sub.org (Christoph Badura)
Subject: Re: kernel hacking tips
Organization: Guru Systems/Funware Department
Date: Thu, 13 May 1993 00:43:22 GMT
Message-ID: <C6xwoB.30@flatlin.ka.sub.org>
References: <1993May11.192459.1618@ucsu.Colorado.EDU> <1sq7vkINNnai@fstgds01.tu-graz.ac.at> <1sqiig$nht@zaphod.axion.bt.co.uk>
Lines: 29

In <1sqiig$nht@zaphod.axion.bt.co.uk> lessen@axion.bt.co.uk (Lee Essen) writes:
>I've been trying to develope an ST01/02 SCSI driver and I had to give up because
>I got so fed up of rebooting.

>If there is a solution to this I'de be *VERY* interested to hear it!

Sure.  Don't enter trial and error mode.  Seriously.

Unfortunately that's sometimes hard to accomplish.  But there are some
hope if you

- have understood how the kernel works and how it expects device
drivers to behave.  Kernel source is of great help here.

- have a thorough understanding how the hardware is supposed to
behave.

- have good diagnostics in the driver that tell you exactly what's
wrong when the hardware doesn't behave like it's supposed to (an all
to common phenomenon).

True, loadable drivers are a nice feature, but they are of little use
if you have to debug an essential driver (like, say, the driver for
your root disk or the console driver for a somewhat easier example).
-- 
				Christoph Badura  ---  bad@flatlin.ka.sub.org

Personally, I don't care whether someone is cool enough to quote Doug
Gwyn--I only care whether Doug Gwyn is cool enough to quote. -- Larry Wall