Re: Fast LKM symbol resolution with SysV ELH hash table

From: Robert Hancock
Date: Wed Oct 21 2009 - 01:43:55 EST


On 10/19/2009 09:02 AM, Carmelo Amoroso wrote:
2009/10/19 Greg KH<greg@xxxxxxxxx>:
On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 01:45:20PM +0200, Carmelo Amoroso wrote:
Just a few other notes. The current implementation I did based on SysV
has a drawback that is not backward compatible, so you cannot use old
modules with a kernel with the option enabled due to changes on struct
kernel_symbol.

Why would this be a problem? Whenever making a kernel config change,
you should be able to rebuild everything, as lots of other configuration
options are that way.


This is not always true... there could be cases in which you cannot
recompile old modules
(e.g vendors that provide non GPL modules)

Even non-GPL modules can normally be rebuilt as far as the module format is concerned, there's usually an object file blob that gets compiled into a module on install or something, like the Nvidia graphics driver. If anyone's providing binary-only fully built modules (which would be inherently tied to one exact kernel version and one configuration) they really need to have their head examined..
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