Re: Add tainting for proprietary helper modules.

[Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>]

On Mon, Dec 05, 2005 at 08:41:57AM -0500, linux-os (Dick Johnson) wrote:
 > 
 > On Fri, 2 Dec 2005, Dave Jones wrote:
 > 
 > > Kernels that have had Windows drivers loaded into them are undebuggable.
 > > I've wasted a number of hours chasing bugs filed in Fedora bugzilla
 > > only to find out much later that the user had used such 'helpers',
 > > and their problems were unreproducable without them loaded.
 > >
 > > Acked-by: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>
 > > Signed-off-by: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>
 > >
 > > --- linux-2.6.14/kernel/module.c~	2005-11-29 16:44:00.000000000 -0500
 > > +++ linux-2.6.14/kernel/module.c	2005-11-29 17:03:55.000000000 -0500
 > > @@ -1723,6 +1723,11 @@ static struct module *load_module(void _
 > > 	/* Set up license info based on the info section */
 > > 	set_license(mod, get_modinfo(sechdrs, infoindex, "license"));
 > >
 > > +	if (strcmp(mod->name, "ndiswrapper") == 0)
 > > +		add_taint(TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE);
 > > +	if (strcmp(mod->name, "driverloader") == 0)
 > > +		add_taint(TAINT_PROPRIETARY_MODULE);
 > > +
 > > #ifdef CONFIG_MODULE_UNLOAD
 > > 	/* Set up MODINFO_ATTR fields */
 > > 	setup_modinfo(mod, sechdrs, infoindex);
 > 
 > So your are blacklisting certain drivers? If so, you probably
 > should have an array containing their names plus a header-file
 > into which the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of future module-
 > names can be added.
 > 
 > ... Not meant as a joke or an affront. User's should be able to
 > know what hardware to NOT purchase because of the proprietary
 > nature of their drivers. Putting a couple "exceptions" into
 > code as above is not good coding practice. If you need to
 > exclude stuff, there should be an exclusion procedure that
 > treats all that stuff equally, no?

There's a point where the effort of creating an array, and
loops to parse it isn't worth it. For two entries, this
seemed a lot simpler.

Though if there more additions, I'd agree.

		Dave