[OpenAFS] Compiling afs module on sparc64

[Jeffrey Hutzelman]

On Tuesday, November 07, 2006 01:57:51 PM -0800 Russ Allbery 
<rra@stanford.edu> wrote:

> Bastian <dea1306@melvex.xs4all.nl> writes:
>
>> I don't know if this is of much help, but I recently compiled the
>> openafs module 1.4.2 on Etch (2.6.17) i386 without any problem. However:
>> on loading the module dmesg complaints about the license ('taints
>> kernel'). It seems the license of openafs does not look GPL enough to
>> linux. The module loads though.
>
> Yup, that's because it's not GPL (it's released under the IBM Public
> License).
>
> However, normally it will build anyway.  It sounds like there's some sort
> of additional restriction on sparc64 that's not present on x86 or amd64
> (at least) in the kernel.
>
>> It looks to me your problem is some kind of 'refusal' to build openafs,
>> rather than a technical issue.  Could there be some policy in effect on
>> your system?
>
> Usually this policy is set in the kernel source, I'm afraid.

Well, this is way delayed, but the problem is that in recent kernels, 
modpost generates a fatal error at build time if a non-GPL module attempts 
to access a GPL-only symbol.  This is a feature, since it lets you detect a 
problem at build time that previously would only become apparent when you 
tried to load the module.  However, it's annoying for us, because our 
reference is weak, and while the kernel's loader handles this correctly, 
modpost does not.

-- Jeff