OpenFirmware devices and hotplug events

[Dave Hansen]

On Wed, 2004-03-17 at 11:38, Nathan Lynch wrote:
> Dave Hansen wrote:
> > I see what the data are for, but not why they are exposed to userspace.
>
> Well, everything that firmware places in the device tree is exposed, for
> better or worse.

OK, I was just wondering what it was for.  According to Greg, it doesn't
look like exporting large binary blobs like that is really a problem, so
I'm in search of a solution without anything to solve :)

> > Do applications make the decisions about which drc index to use, or is
> > that all done inside the kernel?  If  each ibm,my-drc-index were
> > suddenly removed today, what applications would break?
>
> If not explicitly specified, the decision about which drc index to add
> or remove is made by a userspace program which is invoked by the
> machine's management console (the HMC).  So that would break.

Really?  I didn't know that the HMC had any access to the OS on the
machines that it is controlling, other than through hypervisor events.
Can you give me a better description of what this interface is, or how
it works?

We are talking about a userspace program running on the LPAR or full
system, not on the HMC, right?

-- dave


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