linux-kernel - Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

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Date:	Mon, 23 Oct 2006 08:48:12 +0200
From:	Gianluca Alberici <gianluca@...networks.biz>
To:	Giridhar Pemmasani <pgiri@...oo.com>
CC:	Chase Venters <chase.venters@...entec.com>,
	linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper

Hi again,

tainting apart, do you get to load ndiswrapper ? On what kernel exactly ?
I cant on rc2-mm2

Thanks

Gianluca

Giridhar Pemmasani wrote:

>--- Chase Venters <chase.venters@...entec.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>On Monday 23 October 2006 00:40, Giridhar Pemmasani wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>It seems that the kernel module loader taints ndiswrapper module as
>>>proprietary, but it is not - it is fully GPL: see
>>>http://directory.fsf.org/sysadmin/hookup/ndiswrapper.html
>>>      
>>>
>>Indeed. 'ndiswrapper' is intentionally tainted by kernel/module.c because
>>it 
>>is used to load and run unknown binary / proprietary code in kernel-space.
>>If 
>>this unknown binary / proprietary code were to contain a bug (which all
>>code 
>>of that complexity tends to), it might write to memory it doesn't own, or 
>>coerce a device to do so on its behalf, making a kernel crash dump analysis
>>
>>into a wild goose chase (hence the reason for kernel taint).
>>    
>>
>
>Yes, I agree on the purpose of tainting the kernel.
>
>  
>
>>>Note that when a driver is loaded, ndiswrapper does taint the kernel (to
>>>      
>>>
>>be
>>    
>>
>>>more accurate, it should check if the driver being loaded is GPL or not,
>>>but that is not done).
>>>      
>>>
>>Are you saying ndiswrapper voluntarily calls add_taint() whenever it loads
>>an 
>>NDIS driver?
>>    
>>
>
>Exactly - the loader within ndiswrapper taints kernel versions 2.6.10 and
>newer (older kernels don't have a way of tainting the kernel). The code is in
>loader.c in ndiswrapper.
>
>  
>
>>Are there even any examples of GPL-licensed NDIS drivers?
>>    
>>
>
>I don't remember off hand, but sometime back there was discussion on related
>topic of weather ndiswrapper should be in debian-main or not, and someone
>pointed out a GPL ndis driver. (BTW, after much discussion on debian devel
>list, the developers agreed that ndiswrapper belongs in debian-main.)
>
>Giri
>
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