Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1752323AbZJXAbO (ORCPT ); Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:31:14 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752182AbZJXAbN (ORCPT ); Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:31:13 -0400 Received: from icculus.org ([67.106.77.212]:45987 "EHLO icculus.org" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751558AbZJXAbN (ORCPT ); Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:31:13 -0400 Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:31:16 -0400 (EDT) From: "Ryan C. Gordon" X-X-Sender: icculus@caridad.icculuslan To: Jeremy Fitzhardinge cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: [RFC][PATCH 2/2] binfmt_elf: FatELF support for kernel modules. In-Reply-To: <4AE22D04.50708@goop.org> Message-ID: References: <4ADD0086.9060304@goop.org> <4AE22D04.50708@goop.org> User-Agent: Alpine 1.10 (OSX 962 2008-03-14) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1606 Lines: 39 On Fri, 23 Oct 2009, Jeremy Fitzhardinge wrote: > Any open source driver should be encouraged to be merged with mainline > Linux so there's no need to distribute them separately. With the > staging/ tree, that's easier than ever. Yes, absolutely. I agree. But even for mainline drivers, there's a compelling use-case for this, even for a Linux distribution that's 100% Free Software. Those that want to play outside the sandbox still have all the misery of having to keep up with kernel interface changes and supporting multiple kernel releases. That's the hard part for them, and I'm happy to continue to make it uncomfortable in that regard. How the kernel module gets loaded is probably not of great importance compared to the engineering resources they probably devote to just keeping up. > Well, ideally a fat module would allow modules for multiple kernels to > be bundled together (same and/or different architectures), which is > primarily useful for 3rd-party binary distributions. If the OSABI version doesn't change, they can't use FatELF to pack together multiple drivers for different kernel versions. fatelf-glue refuses to merge them, and the kernel will pick the first one, and if it fails to load, tough luck. I think this should resolve the concern from a technical standpoint. They still have the same problems. --ryan. -- 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/