Re: 2.3.99-3 axp combo patch

[Richard Henderson]

On Fri, Mar 31, 2000 at 03:48:46PM +0200, Andrea Arcangeli wrote:
> You have to hardcode something. The vmlinux.gz is stripped, you
> can't find out the offset of a variable name by looking up the
> elf section.

No, there are at least three options for not hardcoding:

 (1) Use a PT_NOTE phdr.
 (2) Look into the section tables for a known name.
 (3) Pass the address in in a register.

I kinda like number 1 because it absolutely forces the boot
loaders to be upgraded -- all of them currently give up loading
if there is more than one phdr (which was stupid to boot).

However, I can see the argument that this isn't the best way
to manage the release process, which would force one of the other
harder options, which also incurr the need for sanity checking
in the kernel when trying to locate the argument block.


r~