Re: Recommendation for activating a deferred module init in the kernel

[Gilad Ben-Yossef <gilad@codefidence.com>]

Tim Bird wrote:

> Gilad Ben-Yossef wrote:
>   
>> Well, seeing as both modprobe and a minimal shell are part of busybox
>> which is included in over 90%+ of Linux based embedded systems and that
>> the script is trivial, not to mention that you can just have the
>> application call modprobe directly, just as it will be calling ioctl()
>> in your case, thereby negating the need for both script and shell at
>> all, I do believe that complexity wise my solution still has some merit.
>>     
>
> I agree.  When you say "have the application call modprobe directly",
> I'm not sure I understand what you mean.  Are you talking about a call
> to the kernel (a syscall) or a library function?  The kernel has the
> syscall sys_init_module(), which I'm considering using.  Is there some
> mobprobe library call that might make sense to use?
>
>   
I simply meant that you can fork and exec modprobe itself (or use 
system() but that
would require a working shell). This would "save" the need for a 
separate script and a shell.

I guess "invoking" would have been more suitable word then "calling".

The only downside I see of calling the sys_init_module syscall directly 
is that it
doesn't do any of the dependency tracking that modprobe does, so it's more
a insmod replacement then a modprobe one, but I doubt this matters at 
all in an
embedded system anyway.


Do people here think a shared library implementing modprobe would be 
useful?

I ran into such a need a couple of times myself and does not look 
difficult to do, but does
anyone else here thinks it will be useful?

Gilad

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Gilad Ben-Yossef 
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