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From:   Keith Owens <kaos@melbourne.sgi.com>
To:     michaels@jungo.com
cc:     Tom Appermont <tea@sonycom.com>, linux-mips@oss.sgi.com
Subject: Re: ELF header kernel module wrong? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Sun, 25 Feb 2001 11:06:29 +0200."
             <3A98CB15.CE4DE67D@jungo.com> 
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Date:   Mon, 26 Feb 2001 11:50:50 +1100
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On Sun, 25 Feb 2001 11:06:29 +0200, 
michaels@jungo.com wrote:
>I have seen this problem too. My kernel is 2.2.14 though, using modutils
>2.3.x.
>I tried to do many things with modutils, tried even not to check the
>boundary, but that caused crashes. The only solution that worked for me
>was to step downwards to modutils 2.2.2. Even then, depmod segfaults
>unless you put a remark on obj_free in some place... Hope you get a
>better solution. 

All you are doing by using old modutils is hiding the problem and
risking storage corruption.  modutils follows the ELF specification

  "A symbol table section's sh_info section header member holds the
  symbol table index for the first non-local symbol."

The mips toolchain is generating local symbols with index numbers
greater than sh_info.  Old modutils did not check for that and silently
created corrupt modules.  New modutils check this field for
correctness.  Fix the mips toolchain.