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Date:   Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:37:10 +0100
From:   Matthias Maennich <maennich@google.com>
To:     Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org>
Cc:     Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@gmail.com>,
        Jessica Yu <jeyu@kernel.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        netdev@vger.kernel.org, Andrew Lunn <andrew@lunn.ch>,
        Florian Fainelli <f.fainelli@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Module loading problem since 5.3
Message-ID: <20191016133710.GB35139@google.com>
References: <20191014085235.GW16384@42.do-not-panic.com>
 <20191014144440.GG35313@google.com>
 <20191016125030.GH16384@42.do-not-panic.com>
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On Wed, Oct 16, 2019 at 12:50:30PM +0000, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
>On Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 03:44:40PM +0100, Matthias Maennich wrote:
>> Hi Luis!
>>
>> On Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 08:52:35AM +0000, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
>> > On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 09:26:05PM +0200, Heiner Kallweit wrote:
>> > > On 10.10.2019 19:15, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > > On Thu, Oct 10, 2019, 6:50 PM Heiner Kallweit <hkallweit1@gmail.com <mailto:hkallweit1@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> > > >
>> > > >        MODULE_SOFTDEP("pre: realtek")
>> > > >
>> > > >     Are you aware of any current issues with module loading
>> > > >     that could cause this problem?
>> > > >
>> > > >
>> > > > Nope. But then again I was not aware of MODULE_SOFTDEP(). I'd encourage an extension to lib/kmod.c or something similar which stress tests this. One way that comes to mind to test this is to allow a new tests case which loads two drives which co depend on each other using this macro. That'll surely blow things up fast. That is, the current kmod tests uses request_module() or get_fs_type(), you'd want a new test case with this added using then two new dummy test drivers with the macro dependency.
>> > > >
>> > > > If you want to resolve this using a more tested path, you could have request_module() be used as that is currently tested. Perhaps a test patch for that can rule out if it's the macro magic which is the issue.
>> > > >
>> > > >   Luis
>> > >
>> > > Maybe issue is related to a bug in introduction of symbol namespaces, see here:
>> > > https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/10/11/659
>> >
>> > Can you have your user with issues either revert 8651ec01daed or apply the fixes
>> > mentioned by Matthias to see if that was the issue?
>> >
>> > Matthias what module did you run into which let you run into the issue
>> > with depmod? I ask as I think it would be wise for us to add a test case
>> > using lib/test_kmod.c and tools/testing/selftests/kmod/kmod.sh for the
>> > regression you detected.
>>
>> The depmod warning can be reproduced when using a symbol that is built
>> into vmlinux and used from a module. E.g. with CONFIG_USB_STORAGE=y and
>> CONFIG_USB_UAS=m, the symbol `usb_stor_adjust_quirks` is built in with
>> namespace USB_STORAGE and depmod stumbles upon this emitting the
>> following warning (e.g. during make modules_install).
>>
>>  depmod: WARNING: [...]/uas.ko needs unknown symbol usb_stor_adjust_quirks
>>
>> As there is another (less intrusive) way of implementing the namespace
>> feature, I posted a patch series [1] on last Thursday that should
>> mitigate the issue as the ksymtab entries depmod eventually relies on
>> are no longer carrying the namespace in their names.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Matthias
>>
>> [1] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20191010151443.7399-1-maennich@google.com/
>
>Yes but kmalloc() is built-in, and used by *all* drivers compiled as
>modules, so why was that an issue?

I believe you meant, "why was that *not* an issue?".
In ksymtab, namespaced symbols had the format

  __ksymtab_<NAMESPACE>.<symbol>

while symbols without namespace would still use the old format

  __ksymtab_<symbol>

These are also the names that are extracted into System.map (using
scripts/mksysmap). Depmod is reading the System.map and for symbols used
by modules that are in a namespace, it would not find a match as it does
not understand the namespace notation. Depmod would still not emit a
warning for symbols without namespace as their format did not change.

Cheers,
Matthias

>
>  Luis