Kernel Programming Questions

[Vadim Klishko]

On Friday, May 23, 2008 4:00 PM, "Greg KH" wrote:

> On Fri, May 23, 2008 at 02:32:46PM -0600, Vadim Klishko wrote:
>> Hello Everybody,
>> 
>> Could anyone please tell me what functions I could call from a Linux kernel module to:
>> 
>> 1) dynamically load a library,
> 
> None.
> 
>> 2) get the address of an exported function,
> 
> None.
> 
>> 3) unload the library?
> 
> None.
> 
> None of these things are things that you should do from within a kernel
> module.
> 
>> Also, what are the functions that would allow me to read from and
>> write to a binary or text file from within a kernel module?
> 
> None, this is not what a kernel module should ever be doing.
> 
> Let's turn it around the other way, what are you trying to achieve that
> makes you think the above things are necessary to do?
> 
By reading a file, I am trying to load a system-wide device configuration. Of course, it could be hard-coded into the module, but why not try having it adjustable?

The driver I am writing is for touchpads. Some customers want their devices to have functionality different from a standard mouse. For example, they may want to turn a touchpad into a keypad, where touching the surface in certain areas produces keystrokes. For those customers (OEM) who use a touchpad module to create their own device, this pretty much amounts to having a customized driver. Instead of having to build a new driver, they could simply edit the configuration file.

>> Any help will be sincerely appreciated.
> 
> The kernelnewbies mailing list and wiki covers the above topic in great
> detail if you wish to understand why you should not be doing any of the
> above from within the kernel.
> 
Thank you for pointing me to kernelnewbies. I realize it's premature to argue before I have read their arguments against doing these things in the kernel, but the first objection that crosses my mind is this: I can do it in Windows. Why not in Linux?

> thanks,
> 
> greg k-h

Vadim