[PATCH] (2/9) freenetdev - update documentation
From: Stephen Hemminger <hidden>
Date: 2003-08-19 19:18:12
diff -Nru a/Documentation/networking/netdevices.txt b/Documentation/networking/netdevices.txt
--- a/Documentation/networking/netdevices.txt Tue Aug 5 09:41:12 2003
+++ b/Documentation/networking/netdevices.txt Tue Aug 5 09:41:12 2003@@ -7,6 +7,18 @@ The following is a random collection of documentation regarding network devices. +struct net_device allocation rules +================================== +Network device structures need to persist even after module is unloaded and +must be allocated with kmalloc. If device has registered successfully, +it will be freed on last use by free_netdev. This is required to handle the +pathologic case cleanly (example: rmmod mydriver </sys/class/net/myeth/mtu ) + +There are routines in net_init.c to handle the common cases of +alloc_etherdev, alloc_netdev. These reserve extra space for driver +private data which gets freed when the network device is freed. If +separately allocated data is attached to the network device +(dev->priv) then it is up to the module exit handler to free that. struct net_device synchronization rules