From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Mar 5 23: 9:47 2003 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7D84F37B401 for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2003 23:09:46 -0800 (PST) Received: from cirb503493.alcatel.com.au (c18609.belrs1.nsw.optusnet.com.au [210.49.80.204]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5491E43F3F for ; Wed, 5 Mar 2003 23:09:45 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from peterjeremy@optushome.com.au) Received: from cirb503493.alcatel.com.au (localhost.alcatel.com.au [127.0.0.1]) by cirb503493.alcatel.com.au (8.12.5/8.12.5) with ESMTP id h2679gLZ093927; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 18:09:43 +1100 (EST) (envelope-from jeremyp@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au) Received: (from jeremyp@localhost) by cirb503493.alcatel.com.au (8.12.6/8.12.5/Submit) id h2679fI8093926; Thu, 6 Mar 2003 18:09:41 +1100 (EST) Date: Thu, 6 Mar 2003 18:09:40 +1100 From: Peter Jeremy To: Kirk Strauser Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Smarter kernel modules? Message-ID: <20030306070940.GA93350@cirb503493.alcatel.com.au> References: <20030306030852.GA1158@edgemaster.zombie.org> <878yvtdpp0.fsf@strauser.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <878yvtdpp0.fsf@strauser.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4i Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Wed, Mar 05, 2003 at 11:33:31PM -0600, Kirk Strauser wrote: >At 2003-03-06T03:08:52Z, Sean Kelly writes: > >> Has anyone ever considered embedding some sort of identifier in kernel >> modules to keep them from being loaded with the wrong kernel? > >Unless I'm mistaken, 5.0 supports having multiple kernels installed, each >with their own modules directories, under /boot. Yes, but this doesn't resolve the versioning issue. 1) If you update any of those kernels, the updated kernel and updated modules will be written into /boot/FOO/ as appropriate. BUT old modules that weren't rebuilt (eg 3rd party modules) will remain in /boot/FOO/. If the new kernel happened to change an API, you're likely to get a panic when you load the old module. 2) -CURRENT apparently looks in /modules/ as well as /boot/kernel/ - and any module found in the former is probably 4.x which will cause things to fail spectacularly. Versioning is the only way to solve both these problems. Peter To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message