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I remember the "good ol' days" when you could reasonably build a monolithic Linux kernel with support for loadable modules disabled. Just compile in whatever yo
by jlgaddis 10y ago
I remember the "good ol' days" when you could reasonably build a monolithic Linux kernel with support for loadable modules disabled. Just compile in whatever you needed for your hardware and leave out the other 90% that you didn't need.
It was a decent (but not very popular) defense against rootkits and attackers being able to dynamically load kernel modules and would also prevent something like this (unless you had the necessary drivers compiled in).
- pmlnr 10y agoThis could be done: we need a common git repo with a config for each kernel version per laptop; eg. config-4.4.30 for ThinkPad X200, which only includes the required drivers for the laptop itself.
- collyw 10y agoThat sounds great but I remember installing Linux on a Mac and even then it wasn't consistent exactly which drivers should have been used as there were variations depending on the date of purchase. Macs are probably a lot more consistent than the majority of laptops.
- blockoperation 10y agoWhat's stopping you from doing it now? I've been using CONFIG_MODULES=n for years without issue. It can be annoying when you need to use some obscure driver, filesystem or protocol on a one off basis and have to do an emergency recompile just for that, but that's rare (for me at least), and otherwise it's perfectly usable.