Re: [PATCH] kmod: make request_module() return an error when autoloading is disabled

[Eric Biggers]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 06:01:07PM +0000, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 10:41:34AM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> > On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 10:28:07AM -0700, Kees Cook wrote:
> > > On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 03:37:31PM -0700, Eric Biggers wrote:
> > > > From: Eric Biggers <ebiggers@xxxxxxxxxx>
> > > > 
> > > > It's long been possible to disable kernel module autoloading completely
> > > > by setting /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe to the empty string.  This can be
> > > 
> > > Hunh. I've never seen that before. :) I've always used;
> > > 
> > > echo 1 > /proc/sys/kernel/modules_disabled
> > > 
> > > Regardless,
> > > 
> > > Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> > > 
> > 
> > modules_disabled is different because it disables *all* module loading, not just
> > autoloading.
> 
> Clarifying this on your patch would be useful, otherwise its lost
> tribal knowledge.

I think it would be more useful to improve the documentation in proc(5) and
Documentation/admin-guide/sysctl/kernel.rst.  People shouldn't have to read
random kernel commit messages to find the documentation.

I'll send out patches for those.

- Eric