[Xorg] can't xorg detect on bootup which gfx card is installed?

[Jon Smirl]

--- Sean Middleditch <elanthis at awesomeplay.com> wrote:
> Adam Jackson wrote:
> >The problem is that we have no way to bind a PCI ID to a driver
> before the 
> >driver is loaded.  We don't have a database anywhere saying "this
> chip id 
> >means i need this driver".  Clearly you as a human can look at the
> pretty PCI 
> >name and know, but the server isn't that smart yet.  What we'd want
> to do is 
> >put that list in the driver itself, so when we first dlopen the
> driver we can 
> >ask it what PCI IDs it supports.
> >  
> >
> 
> For what it's worth, I find that solution to be a step backwards. 
> That 
> means you have to rebuild the entire driver to get a new device
> working 
> that the driver is already capable of supporting.  A lot of driver 
> updates to support "new devices" are nothing more than adding IDs to
> an 
> array.
> 
> Makes a lot more sense to me to keep all the driver/device mappings
> in 
> an external set of files, and just have the driver manager (the X 
> server) figure out which device to load.  Plus, as these are external
> 
> files, they become a lot easier to use by projects/software other
> than 
> the X server itself.  Avoid duplication with things like kudzu and 
> discover databases.

The kernel already provides a mechanism for assigning a new PCI ID to
an existing driver - echo it to /sys/bus/pci/driver/new_id. Kernel
device drivers also contain the list of PCI IDs they support in a
format that a kernel probe can read. All of these problems are solved
once we switch to kernel based drivers. The real problem is X
implementing another device driver system in user space.


=====
Jon Smirl
jonsmirl at yahoo.com


		
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