Re: GPLONLY kernel symbols???

John Levon
2001-10-17T14:15:31Z

On Wed, Oct 17, 2001 at 12:17:39PM +1000, Keith Owens wrote:

> If a symbol has been exported with EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL then it appears as
> unresolved for modules that do not have a GPL compatible MODULE_LICENCE
> string. So when a module without a GPL compatible MODULE_LICENCE gets
> an unresolved symbol, I print that message as a hint to the user. I
> thought the response was obvious, but looks like I need to expand the
> hint text even further.

How is the name mangled in the _GPL case ? Can't this be detected explicitly ?

richard, since ac seems OK with it ...

thanks
john

--- faq.html Thu Oct 11 18:42:44 2001
+++ faqnew.html Wed Oct 17 15:22:17 2001
@@ -513,6 +513,10 @@
and Alan Cox's -ac series of patches?


+
+What does it mean for a module to be tainted ?
+
+



@@ -1794,6 +1798,37 @@



+
+What does it mean for a module to be tainted?
+
+
+
+
+Some vendors distribute binary modules (i.e. modules without available
+source code under a free software license).
+As the source is not freely available, any bugs uncovered whilst such
+modules are loaded cannot be investigated by the kernel hackers. All
+problems discovered whilst such a module is loaded must be reported
+to the vendor of that module, not the Linux kernel hackers and
+the linux-kernel mailing list. The tainting scheme is used to identify
+bug reports from kernels with binary modules loaded: such kernels are
+marked as "tainted" by means of the MODULE_LICENSE tag. If a
+module is loaded that does not specify an approved license, the kernel
+is marked as tainted. The canonical list of approved license strings
+is in linux/include/module.h .
+"oops" reports marked as tainted are of no use to the kernel developers
+and will be ignored. A warning is output when such a module is loaded.
+Note that you may come across module source that is under a compatible
+license, but does not have a suitable MODULE_LICENSE tag. If you
+see a warning from modprobe or insmod for a module
+under a compatible license, please report this bug to the maintainers of
+the module, so that they can add the necessary tag.
+ (KO) If a symbol has been exported with
+EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL then it appears as unresolved for modules that do not
+have a GPL compatible MODULE_LICENSE string, and prints a warning.
+
+
+




--
"There are two kinds of fool. One says, 'This is old, and therefore good.' And
one says, 'This is new, and therefore better'."
- John Brunner