Re: Linux 2.4.29-rc2

[Marcelo Tosatti <marcelo.tosatti@cyclades.com>]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 09:50:02PM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 09:43:09AM -0200, Marcelo Tosatti wrote:
> > 
> > Hi Adrian!
> > 
> > On Sat, Jan 15, 2005 at 06:20:50AM +0100, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > > On Fri, Jan 14, 2005 at 11:55:55PM +0100, Steffen Moser wrote:
> > > 
> > > >...
> > > >  - fsa01 (problem occurs):
> > > >...
> > > >  | modutils               2.4.5
> > > >...
> > > >  - gateway (no problem):
> > > >...
> > > >  | modutils               2.4.12
> > > >....
> > > 
> > > OK, this seems to be the problem:
> > > modutils before 2.4.10 don't know about EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL.
> > > 
> > > Please upgrade modutils on fsa01 and report whether it fixes the 
> > > problem.
> > 
> > Yes, thats the right solution - however I think it might be worth to have 
> > the non-GPL versions. Several old distros ship modutils older than 2.4.10
> > - eg SuSE Linux 7.1 (Oct 2001).
> >...
> 
> Do a grep for EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL in the 2.4.29-rc2 sources.
> 
> It seems for some reason people didn't scream in older 2.4 releases that 
> already had the same problem in several places.
> 
> I see you have applied both my patch documenting modutils 2.4.10 was 
> required and the EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL -> EXPORT_SYMBOL patch for tty_io.c .
> 
> I don't like this mixed approach. IMHO, there are two clean solutions:
> 1. document modutils 2.4.10 was required, undo the EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL -> 
>    EXPORT_SYMBOL changes in tty_io.c
> 2. undo the EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL -> EXPORT_SYMBOL changes in tty_io.c and
>    change module.h to #define EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL to EXPORT_SYMBOL
> 
> Both approaches have their obvious advantages and disadvantages, but 
> they don't have the flaw that they special case tty_io.c .

Adrian,

I know of the other GPL exports but no one complained about problems with them. :)

Yes, you are right, to be orthogonal and clean it would be necessary to do 
require modutils-2.4.10 and have EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL.

I just dont want to break existing user setups - due to the security problems
many might upgrade.

I'm just trying to be user-friendly.