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Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 16:47:37 -0400 (EDT)
From: Robert Watson <rwatson@freebsd.org>
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To: John Polstra <jdp@polstra.com>
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cc: freebsd-current@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: kldload won't load
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On Mon, 12 Jul 2004, John Polstra wrote:

> > When a kernel module doesn't load correctly, this is your cue to
> > run "dmesg" and look at the messages printed in the kernel message
> > buffer. That will tell you why it didn't load. Of course, nobody
> > ever remembers this, and apparently running xconsole is no longer
> > in vogue.
> > 
> > This needs to be a FAQ.
> 
> No, it needs to be fixed.  It's printing a totally incorrect error
> message, and nobody should have to use dmesg to find out what's really
> happened. 

Well, the problem here is that the errno error-reporting mechanism can
report but not describe errors.  We could add a new EKLDLINKER to point at
a linker error (or the like), or a whole set of new errnos, but the
mechanism even then couldn't report which symbols are missing, etc.  One
or more linker-specific error values would probably be a useful start.

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert@fledge.watson.org      Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research