On Wed, 22 Oct 1997, Jonathan Stone wrote:

> You report that your system hung when mcd was in the GENERIC config.
> At that point, the mcd driver didn't do <bus.h> and may not even have
> done port accounting.  (The port accounting obviously makes a huge
> difference).

Agreed.

> When did you see these total system hangs, exactly (what date of
> -current?)

I actually don't remember. It was a WHILE ago. About a year or so (when I
was setting landau up), though I might have been trying 1.2 at that point.

> >For my system, changing the order of probes is NOT a kludge, it is a
> >necessity. 
> 
> Bill, we're talking past each other. If there are *still* problems
> like the one you describe, then it's due to a bug in the relevant
> probe routines. Changing the probe order does not fix that bug, it
> merely hides it.  Whereas the NetBSD philosophy is to *fix* the bug.
> Simply changing the probe order is a kludge. It may well have been
> necessary on your system in the past, but it was still a kludge.

:-)

You're right. We probably are talking a bit past each other.

> >My experience with GENERIC kernels, back when they had mcd's in
> >them, was that they FROZE my computer. Admittedly it's been about a year
> >since I tried, and I don't remember if the mcd successfully probed or not.
> 
> If there was anything at the ports where mcd was configured, the mcd
> driver would have attached itself there. If the mcd driver wasn't
> doing port accounting, the ed driver may have subsequentl attached an
> if_ed device at the same I/O ports. At that point *all* bets are off.
> (I can't easily check the CVS logs right now.)
> 
> >If, however, I misremembered, and the mcd just happily sat on top of my
> >network card w/ no other lossage (beyond no ftp access), then you're
> >right. It's a bad probe and ordering the tests'd just be kludgy. But I
> >honestly think there were seizures, and not by me. :-)
> 
> There may well have been seizures, if the mcd probe is ``too
> invasive'', and the 8390 code doesn't reset the 8390 properly.  Or
> there may be hangs due to both driver trying to talk to the same IO
> ports.

If I'm remembering things right, my experience was that the kernel boot
didn't get past the mcd line.

Take care,

Bill