[systemd-devel] systemd inquiry

[Kay Sievers]

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 14:36, Mark Hounschell <markh at compro.net> wrote:

> I am having another issue with an out of kernel "GPL" device driver not
> being available "on time" so to say. When the kernel discovers this pci card
> it loads it's kernel module and sets up the card for use. This takes around
> 15 seconds per card and there is usually 2-3 of them. When the card is up,
> running, and ready, the kernel module notifies udev who in turn executes a
> small script that creates 30 or so different device nodes for use with the
> card.

A bit unrelated to the described specific problem above, but:

We do not support any kernel device driver which does not create the
device nodes on its own from inside the kernel. Such drivers cause
problems and will fail for various non-interesting reasons. You really
must hook up the kernel driver to register the devices with the kernel
driver-core; it's just a few lines to add.

Doing mknod() in userspace is just too fragile and does not fit into
any synchronization logic of udev or systemd, it is not even expected
to work reliably with these tools.

Kay