Lonnie ....

[Net Llama!]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2006, Matthew Carpenter wrote:
> On Tuesday 26 September 2006 13:11, Net Llama! wrote:
>> On Tue, 26 Sep 2006, Ben Duncan wrote:
>>> Sent in  a EIP report to the kernel dev group.
>>> They said send it on to nVidia ...
>
>>> Me thinks this is NOT a nVidia problem.
>>
>> Me agrees.  There are no references to the nvidia driver in your Oops.
>> I'm guessing that the LKML folks saw 'nvidia' and just punted.
>
>>> Sep 26 04:46:23 desktop kernel: Modules linked in: sr_mod nvidia uhci_hcd
>>> nvidia_agp i2c_nforce2 sata_nv sd_mod ide_scsi agpgart sata_sil libata
>>> genrtc Sep 26 04:46:23 desktop kernel: CPU:    0
>>> Sep 26 04:46:23 desktop kernel: EIP:    0060:[<c01ba714>]    Tainted: P
>
> That is their MO.  Notice the "Tainted" keyword?  That is the kernel
> developers' GOOJFC when dealing with Binary-only kernel modules.  Since they
> don't have access to the source code, they punt.  I can't say I blame them
> too much, but it is a rather strong-arm tactic to encourage vendors to
> release the source for their driver.

History has proven that this tactic doesn't work.  And its nothing but a 
cop-out.  All that they're doing is screwing over the end-users who 
clearly don't care that they're running binary modules.  Screwing them 
when they're running into a severe problem is not going to convince them 
that binary modules are evil.  Its going to convince them that the LKML 
folks are narrow minded & uncooperative.  If the oops doesn't have any 
binary modules in its backtrace, its unrelated to the binary module, and 
there's no valid reason not to debug it.

>
> And in reality, making the source code available doesn't keep reverse
> engineers from RE-ing their binary module either... so it really is a stupid
> decision, IMHO.

Sadly, you're poorly informed on the reasons why some kernel modules are 
binary only.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lonni J Friedman                        netllama at linux-sxs.org
LlamaLand				http://netllama.linux-sxs.org