network driver usage count

[Ferenc Wagner <wferi@niif.hu>]

Hi!

Under 2.6.23.1, my lsmod output shows this:

$ lsmod | grep tg3
tg3                   100580  0 

The usage count is zero, even though it drives my two physical
interfaces:

$ ls -l /sys/class/net/eth-gb?/device/driver
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2007-11-21 19:58 /sys/class/net/eth-gb1/device/driver -> ../../../bus/pci/drivers/tg3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 2007-11-21 19:58 /sys/class/net/eth-gb2/device/driver -> ../../../bus/pci/drivers/tg3

These interfaces are up and bonded together, but that doesn't seem to
matter at all.  I also checked other machines, the network driver
(tg3, e1000) usage counts are always zero under various recent 2.6
kernels, but nonzero under 2.4.21 for example.

And really, the module could be removed, cutting my ssh session. :)

Was this made possible intentionally?  If yes, why?
-- 
Thanks,
Feri.

PS. please Cc: me, I'm not on the list.

PPS. on loading tg3, I get messages like:
     eth-gb1: device_rename: sysfs_create_symlink failed (-17)
     I configured renaming by udev, did I make a mistake?