Re: New-bus unit wiring via hints..

From: Marcel Moolenaar <xcllnt@xxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 27 Oct 2007 13:57:25 -0700


On Oct 27, 2007, at 12:40 PM, Kevin Oberman wrote:

I'm not mandating anything. I'm merely pointing out how
reality has changed and that it's important to adapt,
adopt and improve...

"Reality has changed"? Yes, it has, at least a bit, but not to the
point where we want to confuse serial ports.

Are you saying that "we" should accept reality's change
only for as far as it doesn't confuse "us" ???

Just in case I don't understand the issue, feel free to correct me, but
it sounds like you are saying that there will not be a clear link
between the serial port (sio) number and the port marked '1' on most
systems. If I am wrong about this, please tell me and I climb back
under my rock.

If there is not a good reason or benefit and it the change is accommodated
in some realistic manner without serious penalty. Confusing "us" is far
less significant than confusing lots of users.

If I update my BIOS, the port marked '1' on the back of my system
should
not abruptly change from sio0 to sio1.

Agreed.

In my case, I am only talking to a data logger and not actually
controlling something, but I should not have to worry about having
a port
name change or finding that _UID1 was no longer the same device if I
move to a new mother board.

That's unrealistic. If you change the underlying hardware
configuration you cannot expect that it doesn't have some
sort of effect on the system. Wiring is about making that
effect as small as possible, not about having FreeBSD do
its own thing with disregard of the hardware.

If I really change the configuration, then I should expect changes in
operation. But upgrading to a new system or motherboard where the port
marked '1' is suddenly not sio0 is not a configuration change, in my
view. The new system has, to the typical user's eyes, the same
configuration.

This gets even worse in some cases. For example, many newer mobos have a
single serial connector on the back and another available only as a
header connector on the board. (I have a lot of such systems scattered
all over the country.) I would be extremely upset if the '1' port,
configured as the console was to become sio1 and I could not access the
system from the terminal server. I suspect I could recover from this
remotely as long as I can get to the BIOS setup screen, but I'd be
really annoyed if I had to fly across the country to fix this. (OK. I
probably could pay for remote hands to take care of it.)

(Yes, I had been working with computers for several years
before then and I suspect many of the others in this discussion had
been, too.) Please don't break it! Talk about POLA!

I'm very much insensitive to people arguing with nothing
more than how things used to be in the distant past.
It only means they have been standing still for as long
as that and have become inflexible and intolerant.
Having those people use POLA is a joke because it's really
their own POLA that's at stake and given that it's coming
from someone who isn't living in the present, really means
very very little looking forward.

I've argued that hints isn't the right tool to achieve
wiring. Keep the discussion on topic.

Yes, it is possible that I am off-target in my understanding of this. If
so, I apologize.

I am not sure hints is the right place for this, but I do think that any
replacement must not break basic assumptions people make about systems.
--
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@xxxxxx Phone: +1 510 486-8634
Key fingerprint:059B 2DDF 031C 9BA3 14A4 EADA 927D EBB3 987B 3751

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