The end of init_etherdev() and friends

The last few 2.6 kernel releases have seen a lot of patches removing calls to a set of network driver support functions, including init_etherdev(), init_netdev(), and dev_alloc(). With the integration of networking and sysfs, static net_device structures have become impossible to use in a safe way; these structures must now be allocated dynamicly and properly reference counted. See this Driver Porting Series article for details on the currently supported interface.

As of 2.6.3, there are no users of those functions in the mainline kernel tree. There are, however, certain to be out-of-tree drivers which still use them. Those drivers will need to be fixed soon; the 2.6.3-mm4 kernel tree added a patch which removes those functions forevermore. Once that patch works its way into the mainline kernel, any driver relying upon init_etherdev() and friends will cease to work until it is fixed. Don't say you haven't been warned.

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