linux-kernel - Re: [PATCH] x86/kbuild: enable modversions for symbols exported from asm

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [<thread-prev] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date:   Fri, 9 Dec 2016 11:16:51 -0500
From:   Don Zickus <dzickus@...hat.com>
To:     Nicholas Piggin <npiggin@...il.com>
Cc:     Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>, skozina@...hat.com,
        Ben Hutchings <ben@...adent.org.uk>,
        Michal Marek <mmarek@...e.com>,
        Adam Borowski <kilobyte@...band.pl>,
        Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>,
        Linux Kbuild mailing list <linux-kbuild@...r.kernel.org>,
        Debian kernel maintainers <debian-kernel@...ts.debian.org>,
        "linux-arch@...r.kernel.org" <linux-arch@...r.kernel.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Ingo Molnar <mingo@...nel.org>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86/kbuild: enable modversions for symbols exported from
 asm

On Fri, Dec 09, 2016 at 01:50:41PM +1000, Nicholas Piggin wrote:
> > 
> > We have plenty of customers with 10 year old drivers, where the expertise
> > has long left the company.  The engineers still around, recompile and make
> > tweaks to get things working on the latest RHEL.  Verify it passes testing
> > and release it.  Then they hope to not touch it again for a few years until
> > the next RHEL comes along.
> > 
> > Scary, huh? :-)
> 
> Oh yeah my aim here is not to make distro or out of tree module vendors
> life harder, actually the opposite. If it turns out modversions really is
> the best approach, I'm not in a position to complain about its complexity
> because we have Suse and Redhat people maintaining the build and module
> systems :) I just want to see if we can do things better.

Hi Nick,

I think we are in pretty good agreement here.  We can do better than
modversions.  On the flip side, I would hate to see modversions ripped out
until we have an alternate path forward as it does get us by for now. :-)

Cheers,
Don