Re: [ANNOUNCE] FUSD v1.00: Framework for User-Space Devices

[ebiederman@uswest.net (Eric W. Biederman)]

Pavel Machek <pavel@Elf.ucw.cz> writes:

> Hi!
> 
> > >> Sorry to follow-up to my own post.  A few people pointed out that
> > >> v1.00 had some Makefile problems that prevented it from building.
> > >> I've released v1.02, which should be fixed.
> > >
> > >This should be forwared to linmodem list... Killing all those
> > >binary-only modem drivers from kernel modules would be good
> > >thing... Hmm, and maybe we can just hack telephony API over ltmodem
> > >and be done with that. That would be good.
> [snip]
> > Perhaps I don't understand how linmodems work to understand well
> > enough how FUSD would apply - do you talk to linmodems through the
> > serial driver?  If so, sounds like a good application - but we might
> 
> Yep. And linmodem driver does signal processing, so it is big and
> ugly. And up till now, it had to be in kernel. With your patches, such
> drivers could be userspace (where they belong!). Of course, it would be 
> very good if your interface did not change...

I don't see how linmodem drivers apply.  At least not at the low-level
because you actually have to driver the hardware, respond to interrupts
etc.  On some of this I can see a driver split like there is for the video
card drivers, so the long running portitions don't have to be in the kernel.

I actually don't see what devices could be done in user space with
this context except possibly forwarding device calls across the
network.

Eric