> Hi!
>
> Is it possible to use a PCI or ISA card, that is inserted while
> the system is running, without rebooting?
>
> It looks to me that at system startup time the PCI bus is scanned and
> any device that isn't recognized at that stage cannot be used anytime
> later. A module that is loaded for the specific card just doesn't find
> it, although it's definetly there. So I think the PCI-card driver asks
> the kernel about the available cards in some way, but the kernel only
> knows about the devices it sees at startup.
>
> But maybe the kernel can already handle this in a smooth way. Or there
> exists some busy developing team for that case where I can join?
>
In the current implementation, it (pci.c) scans for all devices at boot time.
I don't think it would be a big deal to modify the kernel to support hot-plug
devices, though there should probably be a notification mechanism set up so
that drivers are notified cleanly when the device has been (or is about to
be) removed.
I may work on this if there is enough demand for it. Currently we're (at
my company) developing a CompactPCI device, and we have a CompactPCI
PC in house that could run Linux... Is anybody else wanting such support?
-- Eric Lowe FibreChannel Software Engineer, Systran Corporation elowe@systran.com"You can't spell failure without U-R-A." -Dispair.com
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