Re: [PATCH] Module alias and device table support.

Horst von Brand
2003-01-31T09:36:03Z

Kai Germaschewski <kai@tp1.ruhr-uni-bochum.de> said:
> On Fri, 31 Jan 2003, Rusty Russell wrote:
>
> > This patch adds MODULE_ALIAS("foo") capability, and uses it to
> > automatically generate sensible aliases from device tables. The
> > post-processing is a little rough, but works.

I fail to see why a module would have to declare aliases for itself.
Aliases are an userspace/after boot problem (i.e., which one is eth0?,
etc), so this means having _two_ (three?) ways of getting the same kind of
info (in-module/in-kernel, /etc/module.somethingortheother). Not nice.

> > Name: Module alias and device table support
> > Author: Rusty Russell
> > Status: Tested on 2.5.59
> >
> > D: Introduces "MODULE_ALIAS" which modules can use to embed their own
> > D: aliases for modprobe to use. Also adds a "finishing" step to modules to
> > D: supplement their aliases based on MODULE_TABLE declarations, eg.
> > D: 'usb:v0506p4601dl*dh*dc*dsc*dp*ic*isc*ip*' for drivers/usb/net/pegasus.o
>
> Some comments:
> o First of all, we're basically moving depmod functionality into the
> kernel tree, which I regard as a good thing, since we have to deal
> with actual kernel structures here. (The obvious disadvantage is that
> this makes it much easier to change these kernel structures, which
> breaks compatibility with other (user space) tools who expect a certain
> format)

It doesn't "move", it "replicates into". Not nice at all.

[...]

> o I think it'd be a good time to consider naming these sections e.g.
> "__discard.modalias", the license one "__discard.license" and have
> the kernel module loader discard "__discard*", so that it doesn't
> need to be aware of all that special crap, nor waste space for it.
> (Well, it needs to know about the license, anyway, so that's not such
> a good example).

Good idea.
--
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