Re: Link order madness :-(

[Dan Aloni]

On Fri, May 31, 2002 at 05:21:22PM -0700, Jean Tourrilhes wrote:
> 	I was trying to make the IrDA stack work when compiled in the
> kernel in 2.5.X (as opposed to modular). In 2.4.X, it sort of work,
> but whoever made changes to the IrDA init in 2.5.X obviously didn't
> bother to check what he was doing and check his changes.
> 	So, I was trying to fix that, and I found a problem with
> kernel link order.

It is possible that recent kbuild changes caused that.

[snip]
> 	As both the random driver and the irda drivers are at the same
> init level, there is no way to enforce those dependancies. Currently,
> the IrDA drivers are loaded before the IrDA stack (== kaboom).
> 	Personally, I found it a bit strange the the random driver is
> initialised so late in the game when the whole networking code (at
> leasxt) depends on it.
> 
> 	Please advise...

I remember something like this happened awhile back with the IDE driver, 
trying to call a function in the cdrom driver before it was initialized.

There is a dirty workaround for this problem: Use a local static variable 
to condition the modules' initialization, and make each module call
its init function inside every of its exported function, so this 
'init-on-demand' will make sure the init code runs before the other 
module's code.

BTW, does the new driver model addresses this problem? 

-- 
Dan Aloni
[e-mail]