Re: Please read if you use x86 -current

[Andrew Doran <ad%netbsd.org@localhost>]

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 01:41:24PM -0500, Greg A. Woods; Planix, Inc. wrote:

> On 12-Nov-2008, at 9:57 AM, Andrew Doran wrote:
> >
> >The x86 GENERIC kernels have become bloated. The plan is to start  
> >moving
> >much functionality out of the main binary and into kernel modules  
> >(new style
> >modules, not LKMs).
> 
> I hope you mean "NetBSD GENERIC kernels" and that you don't have  
> blinders on to ignore all the other platforms!  x86 perhaps suffers  
> more due to the abundance of x86-specific hardware & drivers, but this  
> is a far more "generic" problem.  If we are to have this kind of  
> capability and tool then I would welcome seeing it ported to all  
> NetBSD ports uniformly.  :-)

I'm not interested in doing this for other ports, however it can of course
be done and much of the existing work can be reused. It is up to others to
do that.

> I am concerned however about the runtime loading of such modules -- I  
> would much prefer to have some kind of option for this to be locked  
> into a procedure that can only ever work at boot time.
> 
> Perhaps a compromise would be some security level / kauth flag which  
> would disable further loading of modules in a reliable, sure and  
> secure way.

securelevel > 0 will currently disable load of modules.

Andrew