This could be done but then it adds complexity to the patch (as now two different parts of the kernel need to be modified) and requires regression testing for multiple platforms and OEM's.
This patch is isolated similar to the other HW specific HW Watchdog Timers and yet provides a common Linux user interface that is applicable across all OEM platforms that choose to implement a HW watchdog timer device driver. We chose to keep the changes isolated at this time to gain quick acceptance upstream. -----Original Message----- From: Arjan van de Ven [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 1:16 PM To: Mingarelli, Thomas Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org; Mingarelli, Thomas Subject: Re: [HP ProLiant WatchDog driver] hpwdt HP WatchDog Patch On Mon, 15 Oct 2007 14:05:50 -0400 (EDT) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hp is providing a Hardware WatchDog Timer driver that will only work > with the specific HW Timer located in the HP ProLiant iLO 2 ASIC. The > iLO 2 HW Timer will generate a Non-maskable Interrupt (NMI) 9 seconds > before physically resetting the server, by removing power, so that the > event can be logged to the HP Integrated Management Log (IML), a > Non-Volatile Random Access Memory (NVRAM). The logging of the event is > performed using the HP ProLiant ROM via an Industry Standard access > known as a BIOS Service Directory Entry. Hi, Your patch looks quite clean in general; however it does make me wonder if it should either leverage or expand the arch/x86/pci/pcbios.c infrastructure for doing BIOS32 calls and share that.... it's kinda unpleasant as a general thought to have drivers poke this deep into various guts of the system/bios.... esp if the common code has to do something very similar already. Greetings, Arjan van de Ven - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/