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GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapperGPL-only symbols and ndiswrapperPosted Oct 25, 2006 20:34 UTC (Wed) by proski (subscriber, #104)In reply to: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper by sfeam Parent article: GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper
I do not know whether ndiswrapper truly needs these GPL symbols; let us assume that it does.USB support cannot be implemented without them. The message is quite misleading, by the way: Symbol usb_register_driver is being used by a non-GPL module, which will not be allowed in the future
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GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper Posted Oct 26, 2006 1:18 UTC (Thu) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] USb drivers can be written in userspace anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem.
GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper Posted Oct 26, 2006 17:38 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] Yeah, but how are those userspace drivers supposed to talk to the restof the kernel and the non-GPLONLY functions and services it provides?
What if you need other kernel services? What if you have tight timing requirements?
From what I can tell, the userspace usb stuff basically sets you up to
For many types of devices, userspace drivers make sense, but that should be a *technical* decision.
GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper Posted Oct 28, 2006 0:26 UTC (Sat) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] I thought we were talking about binary only modules and ndiswrapper? In that light I don't see how that construction could be in anyway better than when pushed to userspace. Currently closed source kernel modules from ATI and Nvidia should also be put into userspace with no more than a tiny kernel module handling the necessary, IMHO.
Those drivers want to talk to their hardware, not to the rest of the kernel which they shouldn't know or care about.
GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper Posted Oct 31, 2006 2:17 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] I thought we were talking about binary only modules and ndiswrapper? In that light I don't see how that construction could be in anyway better than when pushed to userspace.I think many people would prefer not to run closed source Windows driver with the kernel permissions (in "ring 0" in x86 terminology). Of course, having a network driver in userspace can have its drawbacks. Currently closed source kernel modules from ATI and Nvidia should also be put into userspace with no more than a tiny kernel module handling the necessary, IMHO.Sorry, that's getting off-topic, and I'm in now way a video card expert, but how are you going to emulate Linux API expected by those modules (provided you are talking about Linux modules)? Are you going to reimplement it in userspace? I think that's going to be the hard part, and not the "tiny kernel module".
GPL-only symbols and ndiswrapper Posted Oct 31, 2006 13:38 UTC (Tue) by i3839 (guest, #31386) [Link] The few extra milliseconds latency is well worth it, if it's even that high.
> how are you going to emulate Linux API expected by those modules (provided you are talking about Linux modules)?
Well, you'd hope they don't expect Linux specific API functions, or keeping them closed source makes it even more questionable than it already is. So I assume they only need general hardware interaction functions, like setting up interrupt handlers and things like that. In the case of graphic cards they have a way to send data and commands to the card, they might need a bit help with DMA and stuff from the kernel, but other than that not much more needs to be done by the kernel and the rest can be done by the userspace driver.
The userspace driver will not be easy to make and most likely be slightly slower, but even if that's 10% it's worth it to get the 4MB big unknown blob out of kernel space.
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