[Gllug] What does [permanent] mean in an lsmod listing?

[Richard Jones]

On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 07:58:24PM +0000, John Winters wrote:
> I've just installed a clean new Sarge system (2.6.8 kernel) then
> downloaded the vanilla 2.6.14.5 sources and built a fresh kernel using
> the same configuration file (modulo changing the CPU type and a "make
> oldconfig").  It all seems to work but there's one thing I haven't seen
> before.  When I do an lsmod I get stuff like this:
> 
> ide_disk               16640  4
> ide_generic             1408  0 [permanent]
> via82cxxx              12572  0 [permanent]
> 
> What does the "[permanent]" bit mean (apart from the obvious)?

The IDE modules were changed so that they can't be unloaded, because
module unloading is very hard to get right (if you want to do it
without causing memory leaks and crashes that is).  Linus even
suggested deprecating it.  See his reasons here:

http://lwn.net/Articles/68182/

If only they'd use garbage collection instead of reference counting ...

Rich.

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Richard Jones, CTO Merjis Ltd.
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