Messages in this thread Patch in this message |  | | Date | Thu, 11 Oct 2001 18:42:41 +0100 | From | John Levon <> | Subject | [PATCH] tainting FAQ |
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short and sweet. (useful) comments ?
thanks john
--- faq.html Thu Oct 11 18:42:44 2001 +++ faqnew.html Thu Oct 11 18:51:22 2001 @@ -513,6 +513,10 @@ and Alan Cox's -ac series of patches?</A> </LI> +<LI> +<A HREF="#s1-22">What does it mean for a module to be tainted ?</A> +</LI> + </OL> <H4> @@ -1794,6 +1798,34 @@ </UL> +<LI> +<A NAME="s1-22"></A><B>What does it mean for a module to be tainted?</B> +</LI> + +<UL> +<LI> +Some vendors distribute binary modules (i.e. modules without available +source code under a free software license). +As the source is not freely available, any bugs uncovered whilst such +modules are loaded cannot be investigated by the kernel hackers. All +problems discovered whilst such a module is loaded must be reported +to the vendor of that module, <I>not</I> the Linux kernel hackers and +the linux-kernel mailing list. The tainting scheme is used to identify +bug reports from kernels with binary modules loaded: such kernels are +marked as "tainted" by means of the <TT>MODULE_LICENSE</TT> tag. If a +module is loaded that does not specify an approved license, the kernel +is marked as tainted. The canonical list of approved license strings +is in <TT>linux/include/module.h</TT>.<BR> +"oops" reports marked as tainted are of no use to the kernel developers +and will be ignored. A warning is output when such a module is loaded. +Note that you may come across module source that is under a compatible +license, but does not have a suitable <TT>MODULE_LICENSE</TT> tag. If you +see a warning from <TT>modprobe</TT> or <TT>insmod</TT> for a module +under a compatible license, please report this bug to the maintainers of +the module, so that they can add the necessary tag. +</LI> +</UL> + </OL> <H2> - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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