OpenBSD Loadable Kernel Modules

LiquidPC writes: "deadly.org has a very thorough tutorial on LKM in OpenBSD, by Patrick Werner. You can check it out here. It gives you examples on writing LKMs and tells you why using them isn't the best idea."

Sorry, Trolls are dying

[Anonymous Coward]

Please remember, yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Troll community when last month the FBI confirmed that Trolls account for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all netizens. Coming on top of of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Trolls have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Trolls are collapsing in complete disarray, as further exemplified by failing dead last in the recent ZDNet comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Ms. Cleo to predict a Trolls future. The hand writing is on the wall: Trolls face a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Trolls because Trolls are dying. Things are looking very bad for Trolls. As many of us are already aware, Trolls continue to lose market share. Green ink flows like a river of blood. Anonymous Trolls are the most endangered of them all.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

Troll leader AC states that there are 7000 Anonymous Trolls. How many Trolls with names are there? Let's see. The number of Anonymous versus Named posts on /. is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Trolls with names. Fake Troll posts on /. are about half of the volume of Named Troll posts. Therefore there are about 700 Trolls with fake names. A recent article put /. Editorial Trolls at about 80 percent of the Troll market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Editorial Trolls. This is consistent with the number of Editorial Troll /. posts.

Due to the troubles of Trolling, abysmal sales and so on, CompuServ went out of business and was taken over by AOL who sells another troubled product to Trolls. Now AOL is also dead, its corpse turned over to another Troll-Lover.

All major surveys show that Trolling has steadily declined in market share. Trolling is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Trolling is to survive at all it will be among Anonymous hobbyist dabblers. Trolling continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Trolls are dead. (and if they don't die, I will kill them).

Re:LKMs are crap

[_peter]

LKMs in OpenBSD aren't intended to cut the size of the kernel down, as with Linux.

From LKM(4):

Loadable kernel modules allow the system administrator to dynamically add and remove functionality from a running system. This ability also helps software developers to develop new parts of the kernel without constantly rebooting to test their changes.

I get the idea that they're used much more in the second capacity than in the first; the default kernel (which users are strongly advised not to stray from) doesn't even enable Loadable Kernel Modules.

Re:LKMs are crap

[Fluffy the Cat]

What difference does it make? If you've gained the ability to load kernel modules you've probably already got the ability to write into aribtrary chunks of address space and rewrite the kernel to do whatever you want it to.