RE : 2.6.6-rc3-mm2 : REGPARAM forced => no external module with some object code only

Eric Valette
2004-05-05T11:56:19Z

Andrew,

The Changelog says nothing really important but forcing REGPARAM is
rather important : it breaks any external module using object only code
that calls a kernel function.

I do not want to enter the "binary module" debate just reports facts so
that people be aware of the problem.

I have a bewan PCI ST ADSL modem. They provide a linux driver that works
with 2.6 like a charm but contains an object file. And of course code
located in this object only file breaks because it calls alloc_obj:

alloc_obj:kmalloc failed,size=-742088876,type=abc0

Complete stack trace attached... (that shows they do not expect kmalloc
to fail :-( )

Do not blame Bewan : they have always been very responsive and do
provide an almost GPL compliant module that works with 2.4 and 2.6
kernels like a charm. In particular, fixing the code to support 2.6
module generation scheme has only taken in a couple of weeks after I
politely asked to the maintainer sending an initial patch. They are just
dependent on STMicro (if I remember correctly) for the library that
drives the ATM chipset and apparently they failed to ask them to open up
their code...

Maybe they can just ask them to compile with regpram=3 but anyway as an
end-user I have no solution...

I will report the bug to my contact...

--
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/ ` Eric Valette
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