Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S271731AbTGRHQu (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Jul 2003 03:16:50 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S271732AbTGRHQt (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Jul 2003 03:16:49 -0400 Received: from smtp4.wanadoo.fr ([193.252.22.26]:1544 "EHLO mwinf0502.wanadoo.fr") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S271731AbTGRHQn (ORCPT ); Fri, 18 Jul 2003 03:16:43 -0400 From: Duncan Sands To: Jeff Garzik , "David S. Miller" Subject: Re: SET_MODULE_OWNER Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2003 09:31:39 +0200 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.2 Cc: schlicht@uni-mannheim.de, ricardo.b@zmail.pt, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <1058446580.18647.11.camel@ezquiel.nara.homeip.net> <20030717125942.7fab1141.davem@redhat.com> <3F170589.50005@pobox.com> In-Reply-To: <3F170589.50005@pobox.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200307180931.39177.baldrick@wanadoo.fr> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1336 Lines: 33 On Thursday 17 July 2003 22:22, Jeff Garzik wrote: > David S. Miller wrote: > > On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 12:00:58 -0400 > > > > Jeff Garzik wrote: > >>David? Does Rusty have a plan here or something? > > > > It just works how it works and that's it. > > > > Net devices are reference counted, anything more is superfluous. > > They may be yanked out of the kernel whenever you want. > > (I'm obviously just realizing the implications of this... missed it > completely during the earlier discussions) > > Object lifetime is just part of the story. > > This change is a major behavior change. The whole point of removing a > module is knowing its gone ;-) And that is completely changed now. > Modules are very often used by developers in a "modprobe ; test ; rmmod" > cycle, and that's now impossible (you don't know when the net device, > and thus your code, is really gone). It's already breaking userland, > which does sweeps for zero-refcount modules among other things. Most USB drivers can be unloaded at any time, so this problem already existed elsewhere. Duncan. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/