Re: Suggestion for handling of boot-time driver options

Rik van Riel (H.H.vanRiel@fys.ruu.nl)
Mon, 15 Dec 1997 20:19:50 +0100 (MET)


On Sun, 14 Dec 1997, Dominik Kubla wrote:

> That fits nicely with an idea i had some time ago and that i discussed
> with Eric Youngdale and Mike Neuffer at this years Linux-Kongress:
>
> What if we could compile drivers as monolithic and modular at the same
> time? I thought that it should be possible to put the startup code into
> different ELF segments - eg .start0 and .start1 - and then have the linker
> strip of the unwanted part.

> What killed the whole idea were the startup code in init/main.c and my
> poor understanding of the whole ELF magic.
>
> Is this an idea that warrants further investigation or am i really the
> lunatic many people believe me to be? <g>

This would be really great if we complemented it with a
/boot/vmlinuz.x.y.z.so for dynamic loading of drivers that
weren't loaded in at boot-time...

And no, it's not that lunatic :-)

Rik.
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