Hi Lennert, On Wednesday 21 December 2005 14:52, Lennert Buytenhek wrote: > On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 01:00:34PM +0100, Stefan Roese wrote: > > The main question I have is, where should the IXP4xx access-library > > be located in the kernel directory structure? > > Maybe you can explain to the list readers what it is and what it does?
It's the library needed for the NPE (network processor engines) ethernet driver to access the on chip NPE's (e.g. download microcode, communicate with the NPE's etc.). Unfortunately a pretty big piece of software written to support multiple OS's. :-( Until now, the access-library available under the special Intel license, didn't allow to build a kernel with an integrated NPE ethernet driver (and the access-library of course). The driver had to be built as module and loaded later. But even this usage doesn't seem correct regarding the GPL and Linus's statement of "derived work". > If it's ixp4xx-specific, arch/arm/mach-ixp4xx might just be the best > place. The ixp2000 microengine loader was put into arch/arm/mach-ixp2000 > for mostly that reason (being ixp2000-specific), while the ethernet driver > that uses that microengine loader will live under drivers/net/. > > > Please comment on this and let me know if such an effort has any chance > > of getting accepted into the official kernel. > > Assuming that the license issues have all been worked out now, it'll > mostly depend on the quality of the code. (If this is the same Intel > code that I saw a while ago, I think it'll need a fair amount of work > before it can go in.) It most likely is the same code. Currently it's version 2.0. This version is available under a special Intel license (http://www.intel.com/design/network/products/npfamily/ixp425swr1.htm) and under the BSD license (when you bug your Intel contact enough). The files seem to be the same, only the header with the license is exchanged. Best regards, Stefan - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe netdev" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
