> This is not merely a documentation string! Also, who says that > a module built for 2.4.9 won't work with 2.4.9-4GB? What patches > are these that warrant changing the label??
The good thing with the dash-level in the kernel IMHO is that you keep the old set of kernel modules, and you can backout your change simply by picking up your previous module. There's more than just the version of the kernel patches, it's also the various config options that you enabled or disabled. These options sometimes do change the layout of control blocks and require that you also recompile the kernel modules. If you are required to use the kernel modules that worked for someone else without recompiling with your own config settings, it may work or it may not work. Even if the modules would be available for a number of different config options (non-SMP, IPv6) and popular patches (e.g. the timer patch) then you're still very limited in what you can do. This is a practical problem with the way IBM is now doing the network drivers which imho can be fixed by version and config independent interfaces and source maintained wrappers around the binary-only code. The question whether you only want things for which you have source can be another more theoretical one, I think. Rob