kldload won't load

[Robert Watson]

On Mon, 12 Jul 2004, John Polstra wrote:

> > Well, the problem here is that the errno error-reporting mechanism can
> > report but not describe errors.  We could add a new EKLDLINKER to point at
> > a linker error (or the like), or a whole set of new errnos, but the
> > mechanism even then couldn't report which symbols are missing, etc.  One
> > or more linker-specific error values would probably be a useful start.
> 
> I fully understand the implementation difficulties, but we have to be
> careful to observe the distinction between correct behavior and
> easy-to-implement behavior.  The kldload(2) API doesn't support correct
> behavior, so that's where the focus needs to be -- not on making users
> feel stupid for failing to look in the dmesg output. 

I don't disagree, but you have to admit that the kitten dying thing is a
interesting (if unusual) side effect.

Robert N M Watson             FreeBSD Core Team, TrustedBSD Projects
robert at fledge.watson.org      Principal Research Scientist, McAfee Research