Hostap_pci vs. orinoco_pci

[Pavel Roskin]

On Fri, 2005-11-18 at 18:45 +0200, Jar wrote:
> > The drivers only list devices they support.  The drivers is where this
> > information is stored for the kernel and userspace utilities.  Drivers
> > don't scan buses and don't choose whether to support a particular device
> > or to leave it to another driver.
> >
> > Not having some supported devices listed in the driver would be a bigger
> > problem, because if the driver doesn't know whether it supports a
> > device, how can more generic utilities know that?
> 
> Thanks for this clarification! I have always (wrongly) believed that the driver is
> guilty for this. According to you there is nothing wrong even if there is 99
> different driver candidates for one single device, right?

Right.

> > You should talk to hotplug/udev developers about it.  The mailing list
> > is at linux-hotplug-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> 
> Seems bug to me or at least something important has been forgotten when implementing
> hotplug/udev. I am not familiar with hotplug/udev, but sure the developers know the
> problem?

I'm not sure.  It looks like hotplug is being obsoleted
modules-init-tools:
http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=11680386

Unfortunately, modprobe only decides which module to load.  As far as I
know, it doesn't tell the driver which devices to use.

OK, I'll write to the list myself.

> > Blacklisting the driver doesn't look like a flexible solution.  You need
> > a way to "blacklist" a driver for a device, or better yet, "endorse" a
> > driver for a device to make sure that no other driver is allowed to use
> > it.
> 
> Blacklisting is better than nothing, now we have nothing.

It's still not quite good in case of 99 modules :-)

>  And it really sounds bad
> when someone says "delete a module".

Yes.

> > By the way, orinoco_pci only support Prism based cards.
> 
> Is there some particular reason to keep the orinoco_pci now when we have hostap_pci?

Because it's more universal.  I can have an Orinoco pcmcia card and a
Prism PCI card and have them both supported by one driver.

Not having orinoco_pci would be like an artificial limitation for users
with Prism PCI cards.

orinoco_pci is good for testing Orinoco backend on embedded systems that
only support MiniPCI.

Development of the orinoco driver is still going on.  Not having
orinoco_pci would limit developers and testers to systems with PCMCIA
bridges (including PLX).

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin