This patch adds version and srcversion files to
/sys/module/${modulename} containing the version and srcversion fields
of the module's modinfo section (if present).
/sys/module/e1000
|-- srcversion
`-- version
This patch differs slightly from the version posted in January, as it
now uses the new kstrdup() call in -mm.
Why put this in sysfs?
a) Tools like DKMS, which deal with changing out individual kernel
modules without replacing the whole kernel, can behave smarter if they
can tell the version of a given module. The autoinstaller feature, for
example, which determines if your system has a "good" version of a
driver (i.e. if the one provided by DKMS has a newer verson than that
provided by the kernel package installed), and to automatically compile
and install a newer version if DKMS has it but your kernel doesn't yet
have that version.
b) Because sysadmins manually, or with tools like DKMS, can switch out
modules on the file system, you can't count on 'modinfo foo.ko', which
looks at /lib/modules/${kernelver}/... actually matching what is loaded
into the kernel already. Hence asking sysfs for this.
c) as the unbind-driver-from-device work takes shape, it will be
possible to rebind a driver that's built-in (no .ko to modinfo for the
version) to a newly loaded module. sysfs will have the
currently-built-in version info, for comparison.
d) tech support scripts can then easily grab the version info for what's
running presently - a question I get often.
There has been renewed interest in this patch on linux-scsi by driver
authors.
As the idea originated from GregKH, I leave his Signed-off-by: intact,
though the implementation is nearly completely new. Compiled and run on
x86 and x86_64.
From: Matthew Dobson <colpatch@us.ibm.com>
build fix
From: Thierry Vignaud <tvignaud@mandriva.com>
build fix
From: Matthew Dobson <colpatch@us.ibm.com>
warning fix
Signed-off-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <greg@kroah.com>
Signed-off-by: Matt Domsch <Matt_Domsch@dell.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@osdl.org>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@osdl.org>
c988d2b284