[PROPOSAL] extended payload handling

[Greg Watson]

On Jun 8, 2004, at 7:59 AM, Stefan Reinauer wrote:

> * Greg Watson <gwatson at lanl.gov> [040608 15:22]:
>> I think this is a reasonable idea, particularly your suggestion of
>> making linuxbios more modular. One of my main beefs with the payload
>> strategy is that each payload has to provide it's own set of,
>> potentially buggy, driver code. If we have 5 payloads then we have 5
>> sets of drivers that all do the same thing slightly differently. If 
>> the
>> drivers were modular enough so that a payload could call them 
>> directly,
>> then this would go a long way to addressing these concerns.
>
> As far as I can tell the only drivers involved would be output drivers,
> ie. video output and serial output. There the extensible LinuxBIOS 
> table
> could come into play. The video driver could store a pointer to the
> framebuffer, the resolution and maybe even a font, to save duplicates.
> Serial is only a kilobyte or so of a driver i think.
>
> Have I forgotten something?
>

PCI device code and resource information should be available for 
payloads to use. A payload should not have to re-probe for devices on 
the PCI bus.

Greg