Re: [PATCH] Overzealous permenant mark removed

Linus Torvalds (torvalds@transmeta.com)
Mon, 30 Dec 2002 23:17:41 -0800 (PST)


On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, Rusty Russell wrote:
>
> The banner, well, you know Linus' position on printing banners 8)

Well, I don't much enjoy banners, but on the other hand I enjoy nasty
little made-up rules that make people jump through hoops to do what they
really want to do even less.

I don't really think that having no exit function should mean that you
can't unload it ("unless you have no init function, in which case it's ok,
unless it's the third thursday in a month that starts with the letter
'M', in which case you can only unload it if you walk widdershins around
the computer thrice").

In other words, the rule really should be: "if the usage count > 1, you
can't unload it".

And if somebody wants to create an un-unloadable driver, he should just
increment the module count and be done with it. No magic rules (maybe you
can make /proc/modules print out "<permanent>" if the count is over some
number, and then people who want permanent modules just initialize the
count past that).

Linus

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