Re: accessing kernel symbols

From: Keith Owens (kaos@ocs.com.au)
Date: Thu Jul 27 2000 - 17:33:20 EST


On Thu, 27 Jul 2000 09:24:47 -0700 (PDT),
Matthew Jacob <mjacob@feral.com> wrote:
>Even better (from a module writer's perspective) you can just read /proc/ksyms
>to get address/name pairs of the functions it would be reasonably safe for
>your module to bind to.

No, please I beg you - NOOOO! Grabbing addresses out of /proc/ksyms
and doing direct branches to them

(a) Will not work on architectures where a function pointer is a
    descriptor instead of just an address (like IA64).
(b) Does not put any reference count on the symbol you are using. If the
    symbol is in a module and there is no refernce count, it can be
    removed under you - splat! Al Viro just did a huge cleanup on
    module reference counts, don't introduce a mechanism that destroys
    that work.

If you want to access a symbol from a module just refer to it by name.
Of course the symbol has to be exported. If you need a symbol that is
not currently exported you have to ask yourself should it be exported
or are you looking for the wrong interface.

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