The new module loader

Linus has stated that the October 31 feature freeze date was a deadline for submissions to him, not for actual merging. He has been restrained in what he has merged since then, but one significant change that will show up in 2.5.48 is the new module loader by Rusty Russell. This patch was covered briefly here back in September. As of this writing, the code that has been merged is missing a few little features, like modversions, module parameters, module license checking, and device table support (which is needed to make hotplugging work). Fixes for these omissions are promised for the near future.

Meanwhile, the new code is simpler for both the kernel and user space; it is also safer in a number of ways. It does, however, require a new set of module utilities to work; these can be obtained as a source tarball from Rusty's site.

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