Re: [PATCH] [PNP] 'modalias' sysfs export

[Kay Sievers]

On Mon, Mar 13, 2006 at 02:26:54AM -0500, Adam Belay wrote:
> I did some research, and interestingly enough, the ACPI _CID method allows
> for compatible IDs even for PCI devices.  These also would present a problem
> for the modalias sysfs attribute.

Again, you can do every "advanced" setup already today with poking
around in the bind/unbind files in sysfs. Userspace just receives an
event from the kernel and can do whatever it wants to do with the event:
ignore it, load a specific module, start a userspace driver, or just ask
modprobe to load the kernel supplied default module.

The modalias is just a convenient way to provide a "default" module
autoloading and is not expected to become a system management
replacement with full featured policy integration. I don't really see
a "real world" problem here. If some day we support this stuff and need
a new interface we can just do this if someone proposes a better
solution. For now modalias works just fine. As long as we have device
table matches _in_ the kernel modules, there is no reason not to export
the match value from the kernel at the same time.

Thanks,
Kay
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