Re: Path to kmods

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

On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 05:54:14PM +0100, Manuel Bouyer wrote:

> I'm not sure uname -r would be enough for this specific case. I'm not even
> sure modules built for a native kernel will work with a Xen kernel. at the
> very last this is true for i386 where we'll need different modules for
> i386 and i386PAE.

We could make paddr_t and friends always be 64-bits in kernel.

> But I suspect things like device drivers can't be shared because some
> includes part of the kernel ABI are different (in interrupt or bus_space
> areas for example).

bus_space and bus_dma on x86 are module friendly. Most everything is a
function call. There could potentiall be problems with some macros and
inlines in intr.h but that should be easy to fix. I haven't checked over
the xen headers.

> FWIW, linux has different module sets for native and Xen kernels,
> and they use different uname -r. I wonder if we should also have different
> uname -r for amd64/i386 and xen, or use something else (uname -m ?) for
> it. But changing uname -p may break third-party software builds ...

I disagree. Rather than succumb to uncertainty and deal with an increasing
number of permutations I think we should focus on fixing compatibility
issues as they are identified.

Thanks,
Andrew