[PATCH] tainting FAQ

[PATCH] tainting FAQ

[John Levon]

short and sweet. (useful) comments ?

thanks
john

--- faq.html	Thu Oct 11 18:42:44 2001
+++ faqnew.html	Thu Oct 11 18:51:22 2001
@@ -513,6 +513,10 @@
 and Alan Cox's -ac series of patches?</A>
 </LI>
 
+<LI>
+<A HREF="#s1-22">What does it mean for a module to be tainted ?</A>
+</LI>
+
 </OL>
 
 <H4>
@@ -1794,6 +1798,34 @@
 
 </UL>
 
+<LI>
+<A NAME="s1-22"></A><B>What does it mean for a module to be tainted?</B>
+</LI>
+
+<UL>
+<LI>
+Some vendors distribute binary modules (i.e. modules without available
+source code under a free software license).
+As the source is not freely available, any bugs uncovered whilst such
+modules are loaded cannot be investigated by the kernel hackers. All
+problems discovered whilst such a module is loaded must be reported
+to the vendor of that module, <I>not</I> the Linux kernel hackers and
+the linux-kernel mailing list. The tainting scheme is used to identify
+bug reports from kernels with binary modules loaded: such kernels are
+marked as "tainted" by means of the <TT>MODULE_LICENSE</TT> tag. If a
+module is loaded that does not specify an approved license, the kernel
+is marked as tainted. The canonical list of approved license strings
+is in <TT>linux/include/module.h</TT>.<BR>
+"oops" reports marked as tainted are of no use to the kernel developers
+and will be ignored. A warning is output when such a module is loaded.
+Note that you may come across module source that is under a compatible
+license, but does not have a suitable <TT>MODULE_LICENSE</TT> tag. If you
+see a warning from <TT>modprobe</TT> or <TT>insmod</TT> for a module
+under a compatible license, please report this bug to the maintainers of
+the module, so that they can add the necessary tag.
+</LI>
+</UL>
+ 
 </OL>
 
 <H2>

Re: [PATCH] tainting FAQ

[Richard Gooch]

John Levon writes:
> short and sweet. (useful) comments ?

Maybe we're giving out too much information? To put it bluntly, if
people are told what we're up to, they'll doctor the bug reports.
People are selfish and will try to game the system. I'm not even sure
if we should expose the term "tainted" in the first place. Maybe a
"compatibility bitmask" with a hex value should be reported instead.

Alan: you're the instigator of this scheme. How widely do you want to
publish what this is really about? I note that lwn.net had a paragraph
on the tainting scheme.

				Regards,

					Richard....
Permanent: rgooch@atnf.csiro.au
Current:   rgooch@ras.ucalgary.ca

Re: [PATCH] tainting FAQ

[Alan Cox]

> Alan: you're the instigator of this scheme. How widely do you want to
> publish what this is really about? I note that lwn.net had a paragraph
> on the tainting scheme.

Well for the moment Im working on the basis that the problem isnt people
trying to con anyone, its people who don't know better - and thats backed
up by my bug queue.

Alan