[OmniOS-discuss] pass H/W device to LX zone

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Sat, 22 Oct 2016, Jim Klimov wrote:

> 22 октября 2016 г. 13:51:47 CEST, Johan Kragsterman <johan.kragsterman at capvert.se> пишет:
>>
>> I wonder if it is, or will be, possible to pass a hardware device(pci,
>> usb, whatever) that has no omnios driver support, to an LX zone, where
>> it has driver support?

In my experience the Linux kernel interface to its drivers is quite 
unstable and driver code requires tweaks to work with the updated 
kernel.  There is a tight coupling between drivers and the kernel so 
that they have to be compiled with the kernel, or re-compiled based on 
specific kernel headers.  The driver interfaces are not mostly stable 
like they are with Solaris/Illumos.

The reason why Linux works with so many devices is due to the many 
interested parties who work to keep it working.

If someone was to compile the driver from source code they could use 
it with the Illumos kernel on their own system without violating GPL. 
Any small error might result in the OS needing to be re-installed 
and/or total loss of data.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/