Re: [PATCH] Compress kernel modules on installation.

Willy Tarreau
2008-02-26T13:04:53Z

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 02:30:16PM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:22:03AM +0100, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 11:14:55AM +0200, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > > On Mon, Feb 25, 2008 at 11:21:38PM +0100, Willy Tarreau wrote:
> >...
> > > > Have you tried keeping the module names intact (.ko, not .ko.gz) ?
> > > > It's what I was doing with modutils in 2.4 and what I'm still doing
> > > > with module-init-tools in 2.6. While I don't particularly use mkinitrd,
> > > > I think that keeping the name intact is preferable and should help.
> > >
> > > How would you see if, and if yes with what program, a module was
> > > compressed if the name is kept intact?
> >
> > depmod/modinfo/insmod/modprobe already know it. And quite honnestly,
> > I don't know about any other program which really needs to process
> > those files once installed. Well, maybe ksymoops, but I'd have to
> > check, as I don't recall having ever been annoyed with this.
> >...
>
> depmod/modinfo/insmod/modprobe know only if you compile
> module-init-tools with zlib support.
>
> And what about the busybox versions?
>
> A different name would e.g.:
> - easily allow proper error handling if the userspace modules program
> doesn't support the compression used
> - better scale to support additional compressions
> - give the user a hint what is happening and what might be the problem
> when anythig goes wrong

I agree, but right now module.dep references existing files with their
real names. Maybe something should define exactly what it should contain
(eg: module_name.ko even if .ko.gz is used) so that all tools relying on
it do not stop after noticing that the file referenced there does not
exist.

regards,
Willy