Sometimes, when one talks about a "config" file, one is talking about editing /etc/*.conf, and start/stop a service, or, in extreme cases, re-booting.
Are there run-time options to the kernel in such a file?
Some of the settings one can make in /etc/rc.conf end up making run-time changes to the kernel. A simple example would be gateway_enable='yes', which sets the sysctl net.inet.ip.forwarding=1.
Or are all kernel-configuration options done at compile-time?
No.
[ ... ]
Given that this device has a different device identification, but that
Windows identifies it as a BCM 440x, and that bfe supports the BCM 4401,
and the BFE docs indicate that that driver should work for the BCM 440x
"series", am I reasonable to expect that if I could just add a line of
code somewhere with the new device identification, it has a strong
possibility of working?
Yes. Take a look at the code in /usr/src/sys/dev/bfe/if_bfe.c:
static struct bfe_type bfe_devs[] = {
{ BCOM_VENDORID, BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM4401,
"Broadcom BCM4401 Fast Ethernet" },
{ 0, 0, NULL }
};...define a BCOM_DEVICEID_BCM4403 in if_bfereg.h, and add a similar entry to the struct above.
What I'm not completely clear on is:
Does a different device ID pretty much guarantee that the same driver
won't work, or do drivers often work for a bunch of chips with different
IDs that really aren't all that different in API?
Really popular chipsets end up being cloned or re-released with minor variants over time, so one driver can handle many different PCI vendor ID/device ID combos. But that all depends on the specific circumstances, there are few generalizations which can be made reliably.
-- -Chuck
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