On 08/27/2012 03:06 AM, Yang Bai wrote: > Hi all, > > We have one driver which has been statically compiled into kernel, and > now we want to upgrade it. But we only have a new version module for > this driver. Could I just insmod this module and make the new driver > work?
No, that should not work -- unless the in-kernel driver has a close/release method that you can somehow trigger. > If so, what happens to the static old one? It stays. > If not, Can we upgrade this driver without re-compile the kernel to > make the in-kernel driver out or module? If the current driver is not a loadable module, you cannot replace it. Assuming that they use mostly the same resources, like I/O devices or memory BARs or however the device presents its control & data interfaces, the new module would not be able to access the device interfaces since they would still be used/owned by the in-kernel driver. -- ~Randy -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
