Re: Automatic download and installation of drivers.

[Greg KH <greg@kroah.com>]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2001 at 01:02:37AM +0100, Stamatis Mitrofanis wrote:
> Automatic download and installation of drivers. That is definately a 
> good thing to have (in general). 

Wow, the security implementations and other complexities involved here
are huge.  Let try a few examples:
	- installing a module requires root permissions.  You generally
	  do not want to run a compiler as root.
	- Running anything as root isn't a good idea, unless the program
	  has been audited for security problems.
	- Who is going to sign/verify the driver you just downloaded
	  to prevent a trojan from being installed?
	- Lots of user machines do not have compilers installed.  What
	  then?
	- Where are you going to find the .config file that the
	  currently running kernel was built against?  Without that, you
	  will not be able to successfully build that module.
	- What is the guarantee that older kernels will be able to load
	  newer modules?  Inter-kernel apis constantly change.  The odds
	  that this would work are quite slim.
	- Distros test their kernels as one package, drivers included.
	  Then they ship with those drivers.  Any new drivers fall under
	  the above problem.

And there are more problems that I can't think of right now.

But the main question I have is:
	What is the real problem that you are trying to solve?
and
	Why does the current kernel/driver situation not work for you?

thanks,

greg k-h

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