Re: Kernel modules

On Wed, 7 Jul 2004, Alexander wrote:

> Does anyone know, what kernel parts may not be used in modules, and
> should be compiled directly into the kernel? 
> 
> Thank you for your attention. 

Well, in general, the things that are built into modules can be loaded as
modules.  There are things that aren't currently modularized but could be,
but building that list will require iterating the kernel.  There's been a
fair amount of interest lately in at leasting making things conditionally
compilable, if not modularized, just because our kernel is big and there
are environments where reducing its size would be useful, even if we build
it in by default.  For example, right now UFS ACL code is conditionally
compiled, but we always link in the basic ACL infrastructure.  We should
add an "options ACL" that compiles in kern_acl.c and otherwise provides
process-friendly "Oops, it's not there" behavior.  Most current modules
have a man page, and you can generate some basic module lists by looking
in src/sys/modules, which includes the build infrastructure for the
modules.  Note that some sub-directories build more than one module.

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert_at_fledge.watson.org      Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research