From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S265336AbTLRWDL (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Dec 2003 17:03:11 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S265354AbTLRWDL (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Dec 2003 17:03:11 -0500 Received: from mail01.hansenet.de ([213.191.73.61]:3000 "EHLO webmail.hansenet.de") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S265336AbTLRWDJ (ORCPT ); Thu, 18 Dec 2003 17:03:09 -0500 From: Thomas Koeller To: Greg KH Subject: Re: module use count & unloading Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 23:03:04 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.5.4 Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org References: <20031218150525.5504D12001E@sarkovy.koeller.dyndns.org> <20031218163756.GA20882@kroah.com> In-Reply-To: <20031218163756.GA20882@kroah.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200312182303.05024.thomas@koeller.dyndns.org> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thursday 18 December 2003 17:37, Greg KH wrote: > > It wasn't safe to do that in 2.4 either. That would easily unload your > USB controller drivers, USB keyboard and USB mouse drivers, as they all > do not increment their in-use count. Thanks for your reply. I am, however, somewhat confused now. If the in-use count cannot be trusted, then unloading a module is a fundamentally unsafe operation, and a tool like 'rmmod' should not exist at all. I also remember that in 2.4 periodic unloading of all unused autoloaded modules by a cron job used to work just fine. And finally, if module unloading is inherently unsafe, what is the significance of all this stuff about forced module unloading and its dangers? I assumed this was a bug at first and reported it as one, because I could not make much sense of it. Now that I've been told that this kind of behavior is actually intended, I still cannot... tk -- Thomas Koeller thomas at koeller dot dyndns dot org