Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S262120AbUCQWkn (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Mar 2004 17:40:43 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S262121AbUCQWkn (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Mar 2004 17:40:43 -0500 Received: from fw.osdl.org ([65.172.181.6]:49829 "EHLO mail.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S262120AbUCQWkl (ORCPT ); Wed, 17 Mar 2004 17:40:41 -0500 Date: Wed, 17 Mar 2004 14:40:38 -0800 From: Stephen Hemminger To: Alex Goddard Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: 2.6.4, or what I still don't quite like about the new stable branch Message-Id: <20040317144038.533c9150@dell_ss3.pdx.osdl.net> In-Reply-To: References: <4058097F.4070606@aitel.hist.no> Organization: Open Source Development Lab X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.9claws (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1270 Lines: 28 On Wed, 17 Mar 2004 17:27:50 -0500 (EST) Alex Goddard wrote: > On Wed, 17 Mar 2004, Helge Hafting wrote: > > > Alex Goddard wrote: > > [...] > > > > > > Safe module unloading is a very difficult problem. So much so that > > > disallowing unloading modules completely has been discussed in the past. > > > Digging around an lkml archive for more info on why module unloading is > > > inherently problematic, and not at all easy to do (well, not at all easy The problem for must users of earlier versions of linux is the definition of safe changed. Safe now means you can remove the module without crashing the kernel. Safe used to mean that nothing could possible be using the code. Sort of like difference between NFS hard and soft mount. A bigger issue is that there seems to be a whole set of smaller distro's and people who write their own startup scripts that became addicted to the old behaviour. I wish all the distro's would get rid of explicit modprobe and rmmod's in startup scripts. - 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/