In message <199808211350.PAA08091@horn.ics.muni.cz>  Zdenek Salvet wrote:
[...]

> 
> I have just loaded soundard driver this way, I don't think we are missing much.
> 

Mostly we're missing linking between loaded modules. If you've drivers which 
are depend on each other you can't do it. The second thing we're missing is
demand loading of devices. E.g. it loads itself when needed.
It's not too hard to add it to the lkm framework, only userlevel linking has to
go and be replaced by a kernel version of ld.so (the kernel can keep the
symbols for debugers already). Ideally you would create /dev/ksym or 
/kern/symbols, so that you can debug after crash with loaded modules or
with gdb target kcore ....
There are only a few commercial unixes left (HPUX is the most prominent) which
don't do it. 

Stefan

> -- 
> Zdenek Salvet                                              salvet@ics.muni.cz 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>            If God had meant for us to be in the Army,
>          we would have been born with green, baggy skin.

--
Stefan Grefen                                Tandem Computers Europe Inc.
grefen@hprc.tandem.com                       High Performance Research Center
 --- Hacking's just another word for nothing left to kludge. ---