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To: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard), bde@zeta.org.au,
        wollman@lcs.mit.edu, freebsd-current@freebsd.org,
        jhay@mikom.csir.co.za
Subject: Re: pseudo device lkm's broken 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 31 Aug 95 18:41:01 PDT."
             <199509010141.SAA23903@phaeton.artisoft.com> 
From: David Greenman <davidg@Root.COM>
Reply-To: davidg@Root.COM
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 1995 19:31:00 -0700
Sender: current-owner@freebsd.org
Precedence: bulk

>> So, given that the interdependency set between LKM and kernel is even
>> smaller with this, do you think there's any chance of us being able to
>> remove ld from the equation at some point?  It would be nice if the
>> kernel could load them directly, without requiring a user mode program
>> to run interferance first.
>
>Garrett and I disagree on this point; it has to do with me being probably
>over-optimistic as to how much linker code you'd have to drag into the
>kernel and Garret being overly pessimistic on the same point.  8-).
>
>I think the main issue is the existing kernel symbol space for exported
>kernel interfaces, and how it would be bloated (or not) by putting the
>symbol list inside the kernel as opposed to leaving them in an ld -r'ed
>kernel symbol image somewhere (what the LKM loader currently does).

   Yeah, I think this is a large part of the issue. It would nice to have the
symbols, anyway, so that we can provide the operator with a traceback when the
system crashes. I get so tired of telling people how to lookup symbols with
'nm /kernel'. ...but this will cost us about 100K more kernel bloat. Sigh. I
really am getting to the point where I think that booting in 4MB will no
longer be possible in the near future.

-DG