Messages in this thread | | | Date | Tue, 25 Jul 2000 16:47:15 +0100 | From | Malcolm Beattie <> | Subject | Re: Does this help explain better?? ATA/IDE Thread |
| |
James Sutherland writes: > On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Stephen Frost wrote: > > You only have to reset the device you flash. Sometimes you > > don't *have* to do that. With SCSI a system can be configured such that > > you could do the upgrade w/ the machine running and then just reset the > > device. Similar can be done with IDE, though I've only done it on IDE > > CDROM drives and not yet with a HD. I do suspect it would work though. > > Upgrading firmware would typically be an unusual enough event the reboot > wouldn't be an issue. In the environments where a reboot is unacceptable, > a firmware change on-the-fly would probably be unacceptable too...
On the contrary, on important 24x7 systems you don't want to have to arrange for downtime just to update firmware/microcode. S/390 already supports this (running Linux under VM and maybe running it in an LPAR or raw, but I'm not sure) under the name "Concurrent Maintenance of LIC" (LIC being Licensed Internal Code, the equivalent of microcode or firmware). This includes processors. As other architectures begin to play in the five-nines arena, we don't want Linux being left behind on those architectures just because of some "oh, you can always recompile the kernel or reboot" mentality.
--Malcolm
-- Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk> Unix Systems Programmer Oxford University Computing Services
- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
| |