Re: New snapshot of modutils
Jamie Lokier (lkd@tantalophile.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 19 Feb 1999 02:44:39 +0000
Nathan Hand wrote:
> > There's your real problem right there. If you want a device driver
> > to preserve its state, don't unload its module. Conversely, if you
> > unload a module, expect the device to be disabled.
>
> I think this attitude is the correct one. Modules are convenient because
> a system can be reconfigured for new hardware without a recompile, but I
> think it's a mistake to treat modules as some weird form of demand paged
> binary or swappable memory. It complicates issues, like preserving state
> across module reloads, and it honestly has very little benefit on modern
> machines with oodles of ram.
Better yet, why not mark a module's pages _pageable_ when the module's
ref count reaches zero? (I realise making this work is more complicated
than it sounds).
-- Jamie
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