driver.conf files considered evil

Just a quick note on driver.conf files that some device drivers deliver.

I believe that driver.conf files, and the tunables that are usually put in them, are for the most part, a byproduct of inadequate architecture The average driver should use no tunables in driver.conf properties.

As a result, I've started going out of my way to remove driver.conf files from device drivers for which I'm responsible. I think that even the "advanced" tunables (such as the interrupt rate used for audio drivers) falls outside the scope of what users should normally tune, and that delivering a configuration file is actively harmful.

One of Solaris' great strengths historically has been the approach to "self-tuning", so that lots of configuration is not necessary. I'd like to see that continue. The next time you think about adding a driver.conf property, consider carefully if there might not be a better solution. (Either self tuning, providing a default that works for everyone or nearly everyone, or using another system like Brussels to provide configuration overrides.)

(PCI devices in particular are very painful to configure with driver.conf... see the pci man page to find out why!)

audiocmi webrev posted

I've posted a webrev for the audiocmi driver. This driver supports CMI 8738 and similar parts. This is for Boomer, and I hope to get it integrated into build 117. If you want to test a binary, drop me an e-mail!

spwr opensource and GLDv3?

If you'd like the spwr driver to be open sourced and GLDv3 compliant (with VLAN support, link notification, dladm and ndd support, and the rest of the goodies), and have a few spare cards that you can give me, please feel free to contact me. I'm willing to do the work as a side project.

I'm also interested in obtaining 100Base-X fiber cards, and fiber cables (VF45 format), especially if someone also has access to the 3M VOL-N100VF+TX card (which is theoretically supported by "afe", but which I'm not entirely convinced works properly because I've never actually had a card on hand that I could test!) I need cards and cable... at the moment I have neither.

Note that this is not Sun commissioned work, but an interesting side project that caught my interest. If nobody replies with hardware, then its unlikely that I'll do any of the work.

Going to CommunityOne After All

Well, it appears that I'll be at CommunityOne (Monday only) after all! This is going to be a fairly big event -- the big event for OpenSolaris this year, I think. I'm looking forward to the chance to meet a bunch of folks that I didn't get the chance to meet previously. Hope to see you there!

hme for x86 RTI submitted

I've just submitted the RTI for hme. If the RTI advocate approves it in time, it will be in build 115, otherwise in build 116. This will allow you to use your old PCI qfe boards with OpenSolaris on x86 systems.

It also represents a significant simplifications of the code. Thanks to the folks who've helped with testing!

audio1575 driver for x86

This driver, with surround sound (5.1) support is pushed into Build 115. Stay tuned.

iprb suspend/resume and quiesce support in b115

I've just pushed an updated iprb with suspend/resume and quiesce support. Its still in the closed tree, but even so this improvement should help out folks who are stuck with one of these on their system board. Enjoy.