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.
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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.
| Index entries for this article | |
|---|---|
| Kernel | Device drivers |
| Kernel | Networking |
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