Messages in this thread | | | Date | Fri, 19 Feb 1999 10:31:37 +1100 (EST) | From | Nathan Hand <> | Subject | Re: New snapshot of modutils |
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On 18 Feb 1999, Zygo Blaxell wrote:
> > User sets CD sound level, starts listening to CD. > > Sound modules are unloaded. > > There's your real problem right there. If you want a device driver > to preserve its state, don't unload its module. Conversely, if you > unload a module, expect the device to be disabled.
I think this attitude is the correct one. Modules are convenient because a system can be reconfigured for new hardware without a recompile, but I think it's a mistake to treat modules as some weird form of demand paged binary or swappable memory. It complicates issues, like preserving state across module reloads, and it honestly has very little benefit on modern machines with oodles of ram. Even machines with low memory I think would benefit most by not autocleaning modules and allowing modprobe/insmod to reside permanently in swap instead of consuming valuable ram.
I strongly believe that autocleaning should not only be removed from the kernel, as has already been done, but that it should be discouraged from user space as well. I suspect that for the majority of users there is no real benefit, and those few users who will benefit from autocleaning are undoubtedly smart enough to add the one-liner to /etc/crontab.
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