Bug 53232

Summary:	why is CONFIG_PNPBIOS disabled ?
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Raw Hide	Reporter:	Fabrice Bellet <fabrice>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Arjan van de Ven <arjanv>
Status:	CLOSED DEFERRED	QA Contact:	Brock Organ <borgan>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	1.0
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	i386
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2001-09-05 09:41:58 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Fabrice Bellet 2001-09-05 09:41:55 UTC

Description of Problem:
CONFIG_PNPBIOS has been disabled from kernel configuration since 
kernel version > 2.4.6-2.

This feature is valuable for thinkpad users for example.
When combined with the setpnp tool from the pcmcia package,
it allows us to change some hardware resources, without 
the dos-only PS2.EXE tool provided by IBM. So my wish is
to re-enable this feature, and to add setpnp in the
kernel-pcmcia package too. (bug #50486).

Fabrice

Comment 1 Arjan van de Ven 2001-09-05 09:54:59 UTC

The problem with this feature is that a LOT of machines have a defective bios
that made the 2.4.6 kernels which had PNPBIOS oops. a LOT. Until there is a
reliable way to catch such oopses in the kernel and THEN disable PNPBIOS at
runtime, we have no choice other than to disable it. (Windows uses this method;
but that has the sideeffect of bios writers not noticing their bios is buggy, or
at least not having it as critical bug, hence the large number of broken
bioses).

Alan is working on getting the "catch" part working, but so far it doesn't; as
soon as it does I'll enable the option.

I'm closing this as "deferred" as I do agree it should be enabled, but only once
it has become actually usable.