Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

[Gianluca Alberici]

Hi,

if that can help, the problem with the undefined syms in ndiswrapper is 
that the module was tainted, and couldnt get EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL'd 
__create_workqueue...

I applied Chase patch...everything goes.

In my opinion i would avoid tainting ndiswrapper.

Gianluca

Giridhar Pemmasani wrote:

> --- Chase Venters <chase.venters@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>  
>
> > On Monday 23 October 2006 00:40, Giridhar Pemmasani wrote:
> >    
> >
> > > It seems that the kernel module loader taints ndiswrapper module as
> > > proprietary, but it is not - it is fully GPL: see
> > > http://directory.fsf.org/sysadmin/hookup/ndiswrapper.html
> > >      
> > Indeed. 'ndiswrapper' is intentionally tainted by kernel/module.c because
> > it 
> > is used to load and run unknown binary / proprietary code in kernel-space.
> > If 
> > this unknown binary / proprietary code were to contain a bug (which all
> > code 
> > of that complexity tends to), it might write to memory it doesn't own, or 
> > coerce a device to do so on its behalf, making a kernel crash dump analysis
> >
> > into a wild goose chase (hence the reason for kernel taint).
> >    
>
> Yes, I agree on the purpose of tainting the kernel.
>
>  
>
> > > Note that when a driver is loaded, ndiswrapper does taint the kernel (to
> > >      
> > be
> >    
> >
> > > more accurate, it should check if the driver being loaded is GPL or not,
> > > but that is not done).
> > >      
> > Are you saying ndiswrapper voluntarily calls add_taint() whenever it loads
> > an 
> > NDIS driver?
> >    
>
> Exactly - the loader within ndiswrapper taints kernel versions 2.6.10 and
> newer (older kernels don't have a way of tainting the kernel). The code is in
> loader.c in ndiswrapper.
>
>  
>
> > Are there even any examples of GPL-licensed NDIS drivers?
> >    
>
> I don't remember off hand, but sometime back there was discussion on related
> topic of weather ndiswrapper should be in debian-main or not, and someone
> pointed out a GPL ndis driver. (BTW, after much discussion on debian devel
> list, the developers agreed that ndiswrapper belongs in debian-main.)
>
> Giri
>
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