Re: Can modules be stripped?

[Daniel Jacobowitz <dan@debian.org>]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 02:35:13PM -0400, Bradley D. LaRonde wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Maciej W. Rozycki" <macro@ds2.pg.gda.pl>
> To: "Bradley D. LaRonde" <brad@ltc.com>
> Cc: "MIPS/Linux List (SGI)" <linux-mips@oss.sgi.com>
> Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 2:05 PM
> Subject: Re: Can modules be stripped?
> 
> 
> > On Fri, 12 Apr 2002, Bradley D. LaRonde wrote:
> >
> > > OK, you can't strip kernel modules (news to me, then again how often do
> I
> > > use modules?), but it can't be because they "are relocatables".  I
> routinely
> > > strip libraries without problem, and those are relocatables too.
> >
> >  What kind of libraries?  Shared libraries are shared objects and not
> > relocatables.
> 
> Oh, oops. :-P  Now I see what you mean.  I confused shared object
> w/relocatable.  My bad.
> 
> Did I know that kernel modules were "object files" i.e. relocatables.  Yes.
> But I've always referred to them as object files (.o), not relocatables,
> hence the confusion.
> 
> Which brings up an interesting question - why doesn't the kernel use .so
> files for modules?

If you're really curious, compare the gunk in insmod (quite a bit) with
the gunk in ld.so (unspeakable).  Shared libraries are a great deal
more complicated than modules need to be.

-- 
Daniel Jacobowitz                           Carnegie Mellon University
MontaVista Software                         Debian GNU/Linux Developer