Re: Standard for module delivery

Stephen Williams (steve@icarus.com)
Fri, 02 Jul 1999 11:00:12 -0700


sfrost@ns.snowman.net said:
> Just curious, why not have it included in the mainstream kernel?

Not enough of a market to justify bloating the kernel tarball. They
tend to be slightly esoteric (read: expensive). I do have major numbers
assigned by the right authorities.

sfrost@ns.snowman.net said:
> As for your questions, how does RedHat do it? I've used RedHat, and
> IIRC have had a 'make modules_install' work and install things into /
> lib/modules/`uname -r`/*, and everything was happy.

Only if you build your own kernel. If you use the kernel-modules RPM
from the CD (or updates) then the modules are in /lib/modules/`uname -r`-N/*
where -N is the rpm version. Perhaps it would be an adequate fix if
uname -r printed '2.0.36-1' like is done in the ac series kernels.

sfrost@ns.snowman.net said:
> Kernel headers and such are kind of a pain though, you could be like
> (I think) the PCMCIA package and have it ask in an install proggie
> where the kernel source is.

It is my (NSH) opinion that the kernel headers should be in /usr/include/linux
unless to are doing something special, like compiling for some other
kernel version. This simple rule would allow the module writer to just
presume in the makefile/spec file and let the expert deal with the odd
cases as needed.

It is pretty much required that a practical package install the module
without any interaction from the installer. That is what an RPM package
does, and anything less is an annoyance to my customer, who is most often
an NT user who is already slightly pissed that he has to use the keyboard
in the first place. (Many do not even know how to list a directory in DOS.)

And by the way, including my driver in the kernel source tarball won't
solve anything, as the user will still need to config the bloody thing
to get it to go, and frankly that is even worse.

-- 
Steve Williams                "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
steve@icarus.com              But I have promises to keep,
steve@picturel.com            and lines to code before I sleep,
http://www.picturel.com       And lines to code before I sleep."

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