Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-kernel (32 mails)

[Jeff Mahoney <jeffm@xxxxxxxx>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On 02/09/2011 11:24 AM, Greg KH wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 11:18:42AM -0500, Jeff Mahoney wrote:
> > On 02/09/2011 11:07 AM, Greg KH wrote:
> > > On Wed, Feb 09, 2011 at 10:36:38AM -0500, Jeff Mahoney wrote:
> > > > Hi all -
> > > >
> > > > One of the things I've seen cropping up lately is the number of bug
> > > > reports that involve staging drivers. For the uninitiated, staging
> > > > drivers are drivers that have been included in the kernel but are known
> > > > to be of insufficient quality to be considered for "true" inclusion.
> > > > Sometimes drivers in staging are improved and "promoted" to full
> > > > inclusion and other times they are considered abandoned and are dropped
> > > > entirely.
> > > >
> > > > One common example is the rt2860 driver. When I find the time, which is
> > > > becoming rarer these days, I try to backport fixes to this driver to the
> > > > 11.3 kernel since the hardware seems common enough.
> > > >
> > > > The issue as I see it is that we have no way to communicate to the user
> > > > that the driver they're using is of dubious quality. In an ideal world,
> > > > we could take the bug reports and fix the upstream driver. In reality,
> > > > most of us don't have the time to tackle improving a driver for hardware
> > > > we don't have.
> > > >
> > > > So, what's the best way to communicate this to the user? Here's my list
> > > > but I'm open to suggestions:
> > > >
> > > > 1) Move staging drivers to a separate package that isn't installed by
> > > > default
> > >
> > > I wouldn't object to this, but it seems a bit harsh as for some systems,
> > > we even support staging drivers to some customers (yeah, I know this
> > > doesn't matter to openSUSE, but not all staging drivers are "bad", some
> > > are there for a variety of reasons, not the least being I forgot to move
> > > them to the "main" portion of the kernel tree...)
> > >
> > > > 2) Issue a warning during install or first driver load that the driver
> > > > is of dubious quality
> > >
> > > That happens already, so you don't have to do anything new here :)
> >
> > I don't mean dumping a short message to the kernel log. I mean real
> > integration into the UI so that the user doesn't have to hunt for it.
> > Toss a message on dbus (or whatever) so it pops up in the GUI.
>
> That might be hard when those drivers get loaded in the initrd, like a
> number of them do today.
>
> I have a laptop here that oopses on the latest FACTORY/Tumbleweed kernel
> because of this issue, I need to get a patch into the next -stable
> update to resolve it, so I understand the problem, but issuing a dbus
> message wouldn't help a user out who happens to have a machine that
> doesn't boot.

Most of the staging driver issues I've seen aren't boot-related. The
system comes up fine and then some device isn't operating properly. It'd
be nice to let the user know that ahead of time. The more I think about,
you're right about tossing a message on dbus during boot wouldn't work
- -- devices are probably all initialized before the UI comes up. Perhaps
a bit of post-processing in a script that runs after xdm. *shrug*

- -Jeff


- -- 
Jeff Mahoney
SUSE Labs
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.16 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with SUSE - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/

iEYEARECAAYFAk1SwuYACgkQLPWxlyuTD7I2PgCcDQA1B6frKTavbKjBd/LnI8CB
mKUAoJex2yIUAnumoumInKXjjO4rsl4g
=Oy9K
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
-- 
To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-kernel+help@xxxxxxxxxxxx