On Tue, Sep 30, 2003 at 21:31:18 +0000, Heilai Renett wrote: > >--- Heilai Renett <heilairenett@hotmail.com> wrote: > > > >> Can I take out the network module from the kernel, > >> then install it using "insmod" after kernel > >> boots up? > > > >Not an easy task, I think. You need to go over > >the complete networking code to find out what symbols > >it needs and make sure all of them are exported. > >You have to make sure that dependency is one way > >only, i.e. it should not happen that n/w module > >depends on kernel and some piece of the kernel > >depends on n/w module. You may also have to add > >reference counting for network objects in other pats > >of the kernel (at least ensure that it is already > >done). And write a proper module exit function that > >takes care of various race conditions. > > Yes, it looks hairy, but I still want to make sure if it is doable. :-) > > If I want to take out the "TCP/IP networking" part, can I just not select > "TCP/IP networking" when I do "make xconifg"? This might make the kernel > not depend on this module, but I don't know how to make TCP/IP module not > depend on kernel. Modules depend on kernel -- that's ok. However, turning the option off might not work. If there is a conidtional compilation depending on that option, you will need to have that compiled. If, in addition, these conditional compilations require functions from af_inet.c, you are mostly out of luck. > Furthermore, I noticed that both "/net/ipv4/af_inet.c" and > "/net/ipv6/af_inet6.c" have a line which is "module_init(inet_init)". This > make me think that there might be a way to compile the TCP/IP stack as a > module. Is it true? No. module_init is just a misnamed init (for historical reasons). It is used to initialize both in-kernel and module code. Now if there is a module_exit, that would mean something (because that reduces to nothing in kernel, so it means some module support). ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jan 'Bulb' Hudec <bulb@ucw.cz> -- Kernelnewbies: Help each other learn about the Linux kernel. Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/kernelnewbies/ FAQ: http://kernelnewbies.org/faq/
