*BSD News Article 28914


Return to BSD News archive

Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!msuinfo!agate!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!news.byu.edu!cwis.isu.edu!u.cc.utah.edu!cs.weber.edu!terry
From: terry@cs.weber.edu (Terry Lambert)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: Re: net / free bsd ?
Date: 29 Mar 1994 03:15:43 GMT
Organization: Weber State University, Ogden, UT
Lines: 27
Message-ID: <2n86gv$md6@u.cc.utah.edu>
References: <2mkvci$e1p@cronkite.cisco.com> <1994Mar22.150117.22837@news.csuohio.edu> <Cn791D.B84@frobozz.sccsi.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.weber.edu

In article <Cn791D.B84@frobozz.sccsi.com> kevin@frobozz.sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
[ ... ]
>I don't know if either BSD supports this or not, but Linux has the ability
>to load device drivers when running, i.e. in multiuser mode.  For doing the
>DSP work you're interested in doing, it might be easier under Linux.  But
[ ... ]

BSD supports it.  I wrote the kernel stuff and released it at the end of
last May.  NetBSD has it integrated.

Both BSD's are about to get demand loading of kernel modules, which is the
next logical step; consider: I mount a PCFS file system.  The PCFS filesystem
is demand loaded, runtime-linked into the kernel address space, and the mount
performed.

Saves on kernel size for a truly generic kernel that only has to be as
generic as a particular piece of hardware (exceptions for a default
console driver, as default disk driver, and a default file system for
boot phase).  There has been some talk of dynamically loading the network
drivers and protocol families as well.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@cs.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.