On Tue, Mar 6, 2018 at 1:34 AM, Alexei Starovoitov <ast@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > As the first step in development of bpfilter project [1] the request_module() > code is extended to allow user mode helpers to be invoked. Idea is that > user mode helpers are built as part of the kernel build and installed as > traditional kernel modules with .ko file extension into distro specified > location, such that from a distribution point of view, they are no different > than regular kernel modules. Thus, allow request_module() logic to load such > user mode helper (umh) modules via: > > request_module("foo") -> > call_umh("modprobe foo") -> > sys_finit_module(FD of /lib/modules/.../foo.ko) -> > call_umh(struct file) > I assume I'm missing some context here, but why does this need to be handled by the kernel rather than, say, a change to how modprobe works? I imagine that usermode tooling needs to change regardless because the existing tools may get rather confused if a .ko "module" is really a dynamically liked program. I notice that you're using ET_EXEC in your example, and that will probably avoid problems, but I imagine that some distros would much rather use ET_DYN. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-api" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html