Ubuntu Server 5.10/Linux Question...

[Nothinman]

I like the idea of probing the devices in order so they always appear the same.

I like the idea of probing them all at the same time so the system boots faster. Obviously some devices have to be setup in a certain order, but that's mainly just the really low level stuff, the majority of the PCI devices don't have any dependencies on the others.

I still hate that.

The fact that the ethernet cards are all called eth# instead of some random letters supposedly related to their driver's name?

USB is a bit trickier apparently, but I can't think of a single USB device I'd consistantly use on a server. Maybe a GPS device.

Whether you'd use USB devices on a server or not is irrelevant, all of the buses use the same infrastructure in the kernel. When a network device asks for a name it uses the same functions no matter where it's plugged into, at that level there's no reason to differentiate.

I like OpenBSD's hotplug. It's independant of the other subsystems. I had it setup to mount a CF card and bring up my wireless CF card in my zaurus. Haven't messed with it much lately though.

It's independent on Linux too, but the drivers themselves have to support it no matter what. And from the sound of it, it's got a userspace component too which is akin to udev on Linux.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
I like the idea of probing them all at the same time so the system boots faster. Obviously some devices have to be setup in a certain order, but that's mainly just the really low level stuff, the majority of the PCI devices don't have any dependencies on the others.

How much faster?

The fact that the ethernet cards are all called eth# instead of some random letters supposedly related to their driver's name?

They're not random at all, they are the driver's name.

 

[Nothinman]

How much faster?

It's hard to gauge, it's very dependent on hardware. Most commodity stuff starts up in less than a second, but there is hardware that takes a lot longer to start. For instance, all of the fiber cards we have at work can take up to a minute to initialize if there's no cable plugged in.

They're not random at all, they are the driver's name.

But like you said earlier, the Intel gigabit driver is em, what does that mean? Why was em chosen?

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
But like you said earlier, the Intel gigabit driver is em, what does that mean? Why was em chosen?

Ask Intel, they wrote it. 😉