Hi.

On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 10:31 -0400, Alan Stern wrote:
quoted text
> On Tue, 1 Apr 2008, Benjamin Herrenschmidt wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, 2008-04-01 at 19:15 +1100, Nigel Cunningham wrote:
> > > > + *   However, drivers may NOT assume anything about the availability of the
> > > > + *   user space at that time and it is not correct to request firmware from
> > > > + *   within @prepare() (it's too late to do that).
> > > 
> > > That doesn't sound good. It would be good to be able to get drivers to
> > > request firmware early in the process.
> > 
> > Agreed. Prepare() should still allow request_firmware and full userspace
> > communication / helper usage.
> 
> Pepare() is called after userspace has been frozen.  (Of course, once 
> the freezer goes away this won't matter any more.)
> 
> There is a separate notifier chain which drivers can subscribe to;
> notifications about impending sleeps are sent out while userspace is
> still alive.  Drivers can use that for request_firmware, memory
> allocation, and other things.

Then that should be mentioned here so that drivers authors can know that
it is possible to request firmware, allocate memory and so on at a stage
when you can still rely on userspace being alive.

Regards,

Nigel

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