Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

Gianluca Alberici
2006-10-23T09:13:25Z

Hi,

if that can help, the problem with the undefined syms in ndiswrapper is
that the module was tainted, and couldnt get EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL'd
__create_workqueue...

I applied Chase patch...everything goes.

In my opinion i would avoid tainting ndiswrapper.

Gianluca

Giridhar Pemmasani wrote:

>--- Chase Venters <chase.venters@clientec.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>On Monday 23 October 2006 00:40, Giridhar Pemmasani wrote:
>>
>>
>>>It seems that the kernel module loader taints ndiswrapper module as
>>>proprietary, but it is not - it is fully GPL: see
>>>http://directory.fsf.org/sysadmin/hookup/ndiswrapper.html
>>>
>>>
>>Indeed. 'ndiswrapper' is intentionally tainted by kernel/module.c because
>>it
>>is used to load and run unknown binary / proprietary code in kernel-space.
>>If
>>this unknown binary / proprietary code were to contain a bug (which all
>>code
>>of that complexity tends to), it might write to memory it doesn't own, or
>>coerce a device to do so on its behalf, making a kernel crash dump analysis
>>
>>into a wild goose chase (hence the reason for kernel taint).
>>
>>
>
>Yes, I agree on the purpose of tainting the kernel.
>
>
>
>>>Note that when a driver is loaded, ndiswrapper does taint the kernel (to
>>>
>>>
>>be
>>
>>
>>>more accurate, it should check if the driver being loaded is GPL or not,
>>>but that is not done).
>>>
>>>
>>Are you saying ndiswrapper voluntarily calls add_taint() whenever it loads
>>an
>>NDIS driver?
>>
>>
>
>Exactly - the loader within ndiswrapper taints kernel versions 2.6.10 and
>newer (older kernels don't have a way of tainting the kernel). The code is in
>loader.c in ndiswrapper.
>
>
>
>>Are there even any examples of GPL-licensed NDIS drivers?
>>
>>
>
>I don't remember off hand, but sometime back there was discussion on related
>topic of weather ndiswrapper should be in debian-main or not, and someone
>pointed out a GPL ndis driver. (BTW, after much discussion on debian devel
>list, the developers agreed that ndiswrapper belongs in debian-main.)
>
>Giri
>
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