Re: [RFC PATCH] kbuild: check uniqueness of basename of modules

[Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 10:08:12AM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 9:39 AM Masahiro Yamada
> <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com> wrote:
> >
> > In the recent build test of linux-next, Stephen saw a build error
> > caused by a broken .tmp_versions/*.mod file:
> >
> >   https://lkml.org/lkml/2019/5/13/991
> >
> > drivers/net/phy/asix.ko and drivers/net/usb/asix.ko have the same
> > basename, and there is a race in generating .tmp_versions/asix.mod
> >
> > Kbuild has not checked this before, and it occasionally shows up with
> > obscure error message when this kind of race occurs.
> >
> > It is not trivial to catch this potential issue by eyes.
> >
> > Hence, this script.
> >
> > I compile-tested allmodconfig for the latest kernel as of writing,
> > it detected the following:
> >
> > warning: same basename '88pm800.ko' if the following are built as modules:
> >   drivers/regulator/88pm800.ko
> >   drivers/mfd/88pm800.ko
> > warning: same basename 'adv7511.ko' if the following are built as modules:
> >   drivers/gpu/drm/bridge/adv7511/adv7511.ko
> >   drivers/media/i2c/adv7511.ko
> > warning: same basename 'asix.ko' if the following are built as modules:
> >   drivers/net/phy/asix.ko
> >   drivers/net/usb/asix.ko
> > warning: same basename 'coda.ko' if the following are built as modules:
> >   fs/coda/coda.ko
> >   drivers/media/platform/coda/coda.ko
> > warning: same basename 'realtek.ko' if the following are built as modules:
> >   drivers/net/phy/realtek.ko
> >   drivers/net/dsa/realtek.ko
> >
> > Reported-by: Stephen Rothwell <sfr@canb.auug.org.au>
> > Signed-off-by: Masahiro Yamada <yamada.masahiro@socionext.com>
> 
> That looks great!
> 
> > ---
> >
> >  [Alternative fix ? ]
> >
> > I do not know about the user experience of modprobe etc.
> > when two different modules have the same name.
> > It does not matter if this is correctly handled by modules.order?
> >
> > If this is just a problem of the build system, it is pretty easy to fix.
> > For example, if we prepend the directory path, parallel build will
> > never write to the same file simultanously.
> >
> >   asix.mod -> drivers/net/phy/asix.mod
> >   asix.mod -> drivers/net/usb/asix.mod
> 
> non-unique module names cause all kinds of problems, and
> modprobe can certainly not handle them correctly, and there
> are issues with symbols exported from a module when another
> one has the same name.

/sys/modules/ will fall over when this happens as well.  I thought we
had the "rule" that module names had to be unique, I guess it was only a
matter of time before they started colliding :(

So warning is good, but forbidding this is better, as things will break.

Or we need to fix up the places where things will break.

thanks,

greg k-h