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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.