On Wed, 24 May 2000, Lennart Augustsson wrote:

> John Hawkinson wrote:
> 
> > I'd like to allow ether_ifattach() to fail (and return failure).
> 
> > Careful examination of a bunch of drivers shows that they don't deal
> > very well with the case of *_attach() failing.
> 
> I would like to see a change in the config machinery so that
> *_attach() can fail, which would then stop the device from being
> accessible. As it is each driver (where attach can fail) needs to have
> a flag indicating if it is really working.  Ideally, an attach should
> never fail, but unfortunately that's now how the world works.  A
> device can stop working at any time, even during attach.
> 
> My proposed change is rather large.  Each device driver needs to be
> modified, but in a very simple way.  Just change the return type to
> `int' and add a `return 0'.

	Presumably this would also allow for some of the panic()s at
	attach time to be changed to simple failures to attach?

	Sounds like a very good plan...

		David/absolute
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