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authorMatt Domsch <Matt_Domsch@dell.com>2005-06-23 22:05:15 -0700
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@ppc970.osdl.org>2005-06-24 00:06:40 -0700
commitc988d2b2845495373f666a381d354a7f80981d62 (patch)
treeaece734adc28728437c9c87ba53428e79ac4c25f /Documentation
parentf5bec39639d386e1893dc440dd536761136ab36b (diff)
[PATCH] modules: add version and srcversion to sysfs
This patch adds version and srcversion files to /sys/module/${modulename} containing the version and srcversion fields of the module's modinfo section (if present). /sys/module/e1000 |-- srcversion `-- version This patch differs slightly from the version posted in January, as it now uses the new kstrdup() call in -mm. Why put this in sysfs? a) Tools like DKMS, which deal with changing out individual kernel modules without replacing the whole kernel, can behave smarter if they can tell the version of a given module. The autoinstaller feature, for example, which determines if your system has a "good" version of a driver (i.e. if the one provided by DKMS has a newer verson than that provided by the kernel package installed), and to automatically compile and install a newer version if DKMS has it but your kernel doesn't yet have that version. b) Because sysadmins manually, or with tools like DKMS, can switch out modules on the file system, you can't count on 'modinfo foo.ko', which looks at /lib/modules/${kernelver}/... actually matching what is loaded into the kernel already. Hence asking sysfs for this. c) as the unbind-driver-from-device work takes shape, it will be possible to rebind a driver that's built-in (no .ko to modinfo for the version) to a newly loaded module. sysfs will have the currently-built-in version info, for comparison. d) tech support scripts can then easily grab the version info for what's running presently - a question I get often. There has been renewed interest in this patch on linux-scsi by driver authors. As the idea originated from GregKH, I leave his Signed-off-by: intact, though the implementation is nearly completely new. Compiled and run on x86 and x86_64. From: Matthew Dobson <colpatch@us.ibm.com> build fix From: Thierry Vignaud <tvignaud@mandriva.com> build fix From: Matthew Dobson <colpatch@us.ibm.com> warning fix Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com> Signed-off-by: Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch@dell.com> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
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