linux-toradex.git/Documentation/devices.txt, branch v3.14.28

misc: Reserve minor for VFIO

2013-12-19T17:17:11+00:00

VFIO currently allocates it's own dynamic chardev range, reserving the
first minor for the control part of the interface (/dev/vfio/vfio) and
the remainder for VFIO groups (/dev/vfio/$GROUP).  This works, but it
doesn't support auto loading.  For instance when libvirt checks for
VFIO support it looks for /dev/vfio/vfio, which currently doesn't
exist unless the vfio module is loaded.  By converting the control
device to a misc driver and reserving a static minor, we can enable
auto loading.

Reserving the minor is a prerequist to that conversion.  Minor 196
is unused by anything currently in the kernel.

Suggested-by: Paolo Bonzini 
Signed-off-by: Alex Williamson 
Acked-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

cuse: add fix minor number to /dev/cuse

2013-10-01T14:44:54+00:00

This allows udev (or more recently systemd-tmpfiles) to create /dev/cuse on
boot, in the same way as /dev/fuse is currently created, and the corresponding
module to be loaded on first access.

The corresponding functionalty was introduced for fuse in commit 578454f.

Signed-off-by: Tom Gundersen 
Cc: Kay Sievers 
Signed-off-by: Miklos Szeredi

/dev/oldmem: Remove the interface

2013-07-03T23:08:03+00:00

/dev/oldmem provides the interface for us to access the "old memory" in
the dump-capture kernel.  Unfortunately, no one actually uses this
interface.

And this interface could actually cause some real problems if used on ia64
where the cached/uncached accesses are mixed.  See the discussion from the
link: https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/4/12/386.

So Eric suggested that we should remove /dev/oldmem as an unused piece of
code.

[akpm@linux-foundation.org: mention /dev/oldmem obsolescence in devices.txt]
Suggested-by: "Eric W. Biederman" 
Signed-off-by: Zhang Yanfei 
Cc: Vivek Goyal 
Cc: Dave Hansen 
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" 
Cc: "H. Peter Anvin" 
Cc: Benjamin Herrenschmidt 
Cc: Fenghua Yu 
Cc: Heiko Carstens 
Cc: Martin Schwidefsky 
Cc: Matt Fleming 
Cc: Michael Holzheu 
Cc: Paul Mackerras 
Cc: Ralf Baechle 
Cc: Tony Luck 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds

block: remove refs to XD disks from documentation

2013-05-17T13:17:12+00:00

Commit d1a6f4f19728d6e90480e53601a90fc9f6a348ad
"block: delete super ancient PC-XT driver for 1980's hardware"
deleted the XD disk driver, but there are still a few
references to it in the documentation directory. Delete
the remnants and thus also free up the major block device
13 for reuse.

Cc: Paul Gortmaker 
Cc: Jens Axboe 
Signed-off-by: Linus Walleij 
Signed-off-by: Jens Axboe

firmware: remove last vestiges of dabusb

2012-11-21T21:03:01+00:00

dabusb was removed with commit dae86ccbc3 ("[media] dabusb: remove
obsolete driver"), so remove the last vestiges of firmware and
documentation.

Signed-off-by: Tim Gardner 
Cc: Rob Landley 
Cc: Paul Gortmaker 
Cc: Ben Hutchings 
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

Doc: document max raw dev number

2012-06-03T10:05:50+00:00

Documenting description about max minor number of raw devices.

Signed-off-by: Kazuo Moriwaka 
Signed-off-by: Jiri Kosina

Merge branch 'delete-mca' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/paulg/linux

2012-05-24T00:12:06+00:00

Pull the MCA deletion branch from Paul Gortmaker:
 "It was good that we could support MCA machines back in the day, but
  realistically, nobody is using them anymore.  They were mostly limited
  to 386-sx 16MHz CPU and some 486 class machines and never more than
  64MB of RAM.  Even the enthusiast hobbyist community seems to have
  dried up close to ten years ago, based on what you can find searching
  various websites dedicated to the relatively short lived hardware.

  So lets remove the support relating to CONFIG_MCA.  There is no point
  carrying this forward, wasting cycles doing routine maintenance on it;
  wasting allyesconfig build time on validating it, wasting I/O on git
  grep'ping over it, and so on."

Let's see if anybody screams.  It generally has compiled, and James
Bottomley pointed out that there was a MCA extension from NCR that
allowed for up to 4GB of memory and PPro-class machines.  So in *theory*
there may be users out there.

But even James (technically listed as a maintainer) doesn't actually
have a system, and while Alan Cox claims to have a machine in his cellar
that he offered to anybody who wants to take it off his hands, he didn't
argue for keeping MCA support either.

So we could bring it back.  But somebody had better speak up and talk
about how they have actually been using said MCA hardware with modern
kernels for us to do that.  And David already took the patch to delete
all the networking driver code (commit a5e371f61ad3: "drivers/net:
delete all code/drivers depending on CONFIG_MCA").

* 'delete-mca' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/paulg/linux:
  MCA: delete all remaining traces of microchannel bus support.
  scsi: delete the MCA specific drivers and driver code
  serial: delete the MCA specific 8250 support.
  arm: remove ability to select CONFIG_MCA

MCA: delete all remaining traces of microchannel bus support.

2012-05-17T23:06:13+00:00

Hardware with MCA bus is limited to 386 and 486 class machines
that are now 20+ years old and typically with less than 32MB
of memory.  A quick search on the internet, and you see that
even the MCA hobbyist/enthusiast community has lost interest
in the early 2000 era and never really even moved ahead from
the 2.4 kernels to the 2.6 series.

This deletes anything remaining related to CONFIG_MCA from core
kernel code and from the x86 architecture.  There is no point in
carrying this any further into the future.

One complication to watch for is inadvertently scooping up
stuff relating to machine check, since there is overlap in
the TLA name space (e.g. arch/x86/boot/mca.c).

Cc: Thomas Gleixner 
Cc: James Bottomley 
Cc: x86@kernel.org
Acked-by: Ingo Molnar 
Acked-by: H. Peter Anvin 
Signed-off-by: Paul Gortmaker

kmsg - add Documentation/ABI/testing/dev-kmsg

2012-05-08T17:44:25+00:00

Signed-off-by: Kay Sievers 
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman

vhost-net: add module alias (v2.1)

2012-01-13T18:12:23+00:00

By adding some module aliases, programs (or users) won't have to explicitly
call modprobe. Vhost-net will always be available if built into the kernel.
It does require assigning a permanent minor number for depmod to work.

Also:
  - use C99 style initialization.
  - add missing entry in documentation for loop-control

Signed-off-by: Stephen Hemminger 
Acked-By: Kay Sievers 
Signed-off-by: David S. Miller