From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S266133AbUHSTAj (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:00:39 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S267258AbUHSTAg (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:00:36 -0400 Received: from omx1-ext.sgi.com ([192.48.179.11]:37794 "EHLO omx1.americas.sgi.com") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S266133AbUHSTAd (ORCPT ); Thu, 19 Aug 2004 15:00:33 -0400 Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2004 14:00:29 -0500 From: Robin Holt To: jmerkey@comcast.net Cc: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, jmerkey@drdos.com Subject: Re: kallsyms 2.6.8 address ordering Message-ID: <20040819190029.GC1313@lnx-holt.americas.sgi.com> References: <081920041810.18883.4124ED110002BABC000049C32200748184970A059D0A0306@comcast.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <081920041810.18883.4124ED110002BABC000049C32200748184970A059D0A0306@comcast.net> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.1i Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 06:10:25PM +0000, jmerkey@comcast.net wrote: > I've noticed that LKML of late is unresponsive to a lot bug posts and > that email is being blocked for a lot of folks. It smells like partisan > politics based on economic motivations and its not really "open" any > more when people stoop to this level of behavior. That aside: I attribute this to people being over busy right now. > kallsyms in 2.6.8 is presenting module symbol tables with out of order > addresses in 2.6.X. This makes maintaining a commercial kernel debugger > for Linux 2.6 kernels nighmareish. Also, the need to kmalloc name strings > (like kdb does) from kallsyms in kdbsupport.c while IN THE DEBUGGER makes > it impossible to debug large portions of the kernel code with kdb, so I > have rewritten large sections of kallsyms.c to handle all these broken, > brain-dead cases in mdb and I am not relying much on kdb hooks anymore. > Why on earth does Linux need to have shifting tables of test strings > for module names requiring all this complexity in the symbol tables > and kallsyms. It must be useful for people using small memory footprint machines. Check with the folks doing embedded stuff. I remember a discussion about kallsyms and scaling problems with top reading some /proc/ file. Look at this: http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=linux-kernel&m=108758995727517&w=2 > I don't expect a response so I'll keep coding around the broken Linux > 2.6 code but I wanted to post a record of this so perhaps someone will > think about over-engineering systems which should be left alone. > > Jeff Good Luck, Robin Holt