[linux-mm-cc] kernel upgrade

John McCabe-Dansted gmatht at gmail.com
Sat Aug 23 23:09:36 EDT 2008


On Sun, Aug 24, 2008 at 6:37 AM,  <tibor.bamhor at netkosice.sk> wrote:
> Hi,
> I wonder, what will happen, when a kernel is upgraded like 2.6.x -> 2.6.y but
> compcache is not recompiled.
> Will just modules refuse to load and compcache will not be activated? This
> would be OK.

This is always what happens for me.

"On Linux, in an attempt to mitigate this problem, symbol versioning
is used and placed within the .modinfo section of ELF modules. This
versioning information can be compared to the running kernel; if
incompatible, the module will not be loaded." --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadable_kernel_module


> But can it cause something worse? like system instability or so...

This has never occurred with me. The symbol versioning seems
sufficient to prevent this.


John C. McCabe-Dansted
PhD Student
University of Western Australia


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