Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: incorrect taint of ndiswrapper | From | Alan Cox <> | Date | Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:00:51 +0100 |
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Ar Llu, 2006-10-23 am 04:35 -0700, ysgrifennodd Giridhar Pemmasani: > So the idea of tainting is to _prevent_ any binary code being loaded into > kernel, even if kernel is marked as having binary code loaded, which I > thought was the purpose of tainting (so that people not interested in dealing > with binary code know they don't have/want to)? If that is the goal, how do > you know this scheme of adding names to module loader in kernel guarantees > that (now or in future)?
There are two overlapping mechanisms here
Taint is used to identify situations where debug data may not be good, that may be proprietary or other dubiously legal code, it may be forcing SMP active on non SMP suitable systems, it may be overriding certain options in a potentially hazardous fashion. Taint exists primarily to help debugging data analysis.
EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL() is used to assert that the symbol is absolutely definitely not a public symbol. EXPORT_SYMBOL exports symbols which might be but even then the GPL derivative work rules apply. When you mark a driver GPL it is permitted to use _GPL symbols, but if it does so it cannot then go and load other non GPL symbols and expect people not to question its validity.
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