> It seems to me that the first thing to do to improve lkm, is to make
> the kernel export a subset of its symbols.  This solves the above
> problem and also makes the interface that an lkm uses more controlled,
> it is only what the kernel explicitly exports.

I'm running such a system for quite some time now.  It uses the symbols loaded
by the boot code for use with ddb and supplies an a.out file with zero-sized
text and data and these symbols as "/kern/kernel", i.e. in the kernfs
filesystem.

For better support of this, I'd like to change the VM system to be able to
make this symbol table pageable (that is, to allow the machine dependent code
to give physical memory to the VM subsystem after that is initialized, and then
use this after copying the symbol table to anonymous memory), if it isn't
used for ddb.

In addition to this, this will of course need some modifications for ports
that don't use a.out format for their executable format, and for those that
currently don't load the symbol table during boot.
--
ws@TooLs.DE     (Wolfgang Solfrank, TooLs GmbH) 	+49-228-985800