Autoconfiguration Changes

Starting with the SunOS 4.1.2 system, the framework initialized all the drivers in the system before starting init(8). The advent of loadable module technology enabled some device drivers to be added and removed manually at later times in the life of the system.

The SunOS 5.7 system extends this idea to make every driver loadable, and to allow the system to automatically configure itself continually in response to the needs of applications. This, plus the unification of the "mb" style and Open Boot style autoconfiguration, has meant some significant changes to the probe(9E) and attach(9E) routines, and has added detach(9E).

Because all device drivers are loadable, the kernel no longer needs to be recompiled and relinked to add a driver. The config(8) program has been replaced by Open Boot PROM information and supplemented by information in hardware configuration files (see driver.conf(4)).

Changes to Routines

• The xxinit() routine for loadable modules in the SunOS 4.1 system has been split into three routines. The VDLOAD case has become _init(9E), the VDUNLOAD case has become _fini(9E), and the VDSTAT case has become _info(9E).

• The SunOS 5.7 probe(9E) routine is not the same as probe(9E) in the SunOS 4.1 system. It is called before attach(9E), and may be called any number of times, so it must be stateless. If it allocates resources before it probes the device, it must deallocate them before returning (regardless of success or failure). attach(9E) will not be called unless probe(9E) succeeds.

• attach(9E) is called to allocate any resources the driver needs to operate the device. The system now assigns the instance number (previously known as the unit number) to the device.

The reason the rules are so stringent is that the implementation will change. If driver routines follow these rules, they will not be affected by changes to the implementation. If, however, they assume that the autoconfiguration routines are called only in a certain order (first probe(9E), then attach(9E), for example), these drivers will break in some future release.

Instance Numbers

In the SunOS 4.1 system, drivers counted the number of devices that they found, and assigned a unit number to each (in the range 0 to the number of units found less one). Now, these unit numbers are called instance numbers, and the system assigns the numbers to devices.

Instances can be thought of as a shorthand name for a particular instance of a device (foo0 could name instance 0 of device foo). The system assigns and retrieves the instance numbers, even after any number of reboots. This is because at open(2) time all the system has is a dev_t. To determine which device is needed (as it may need to be attached), the system needs to get the instance number (which the driver retrieves from the minor number).

The mapping between instance numbers and minor numbers (see getinfo(9E)) should be static. The driver should not require any state information to do the translation, since that information might not be available (the device might not be attached).