[tlug] Kernel driver hacking (2.6.x)

[Godwin Stewart <godwin.stewart@example.com>]

My laptop is fitted with one of those horrid winmodem thingies. There *are*
drivers for it[1] and they work fine as long as you stick to a 2.4.x
kernel. They do claim to be usable with a 2.6 kernel but I've been running
up against the following problems:

1, partially solved - A symbol that used to be #defined in linux/pci_ids.h
and is no longer. I've added it back but need to inform the kernel team
that the symbol needs to be put back in the kernel source. Incidentally,
does anyone here know who to contact? There is no contact in the pci_ids.h
file.

2 - The drivers provided by Hebeisen make liberal use of the inter_module_*
kernel functions, which are deprecated according to linux/module.h. I've
googled around and found stacks of pages saying basically, "yeah, these
things were deprecated ages ago blah blah yada yada," but NOTHING on how
the hell to use their replacements. The kernel source does indeed say "Use
symbol_get and symbol_put instead.  You'll thank me." but what replaces
inter_module_register and how do you use symbol_* ?

The answers may seem trivially obvious to a full-time kernel hacker. Guess
what: I'm not a full-time kernel hacker, I'm an occasional coder with
/some/ knowledge of kernal mechanisms who just wants to get his damn
modem working :)

My aim here is to patch the drivers so that they compile cleanly on a 2.6
kernel and don't give me any lip about deprecated functions and missing
symbols. So, basically what I need is a link to some information that
describes in reasonable depth the use of all these functions so that I can
clean these drivers up. The ltmodem project appears no longer to be
maintained, and with more and more machines using 2.6 kernels there's no
real excuse for the project to stay in limbo like that.




[1] - http://www.physcip.uni-stuttgart.de/heby/ltmodem/

-- 
G. Stewart - godwin.stewart@example.com

Do molecular biologists wear designer genes?

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