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ldls: what 110 modules ask for at init, in order of how many ask

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Counting stub calls turned out to be the wrong metric -- one module walking an
rbtree called rb_first sixty-four times and told us nothing. Counting how many
*modules* need a symbol is the useful one:

    __kmem_cache_create_args   25
    crypto_register_template   11
    _printk                    10
    crypto_register_alg        10
    __register_nls              9
    ...

Forty-four distinct symbols carry all 110 modules through init_module. Small
enough to be a plan rather than an estimate, and not a number anyone could
have guessed: the slab allocator at the top and a long tail of registration
calls that mostly want to record a pointer and return zero.

It says nothing about probe(), which is where the real surface is and which
the kernel rather than the module is supposed to call. That is L2.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01VQ7Qx8E1q1M1bbCq8QLHS2
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Nexoniarz 2026-09-14 08:06:20 +02:00
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docs/plan/ldls.md
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@ -345,6 +345,32 @@ The 22 are not failures of the loader; they are drivers that needed an
allocation to come back non-null. The 29 without an entry point are mostly
library modules that exist to be depended on.
### And what it says about the work queue
Counting *calls* is the wrong metric — one module walking an rbtree called
`rb_first` sixty-four times and told us nothing. Counting **how many modules
need a symbol** is the useful one, and over 110 modules it comes to this:
| symbol | modules |
|---|---|
| `__kmem_cache_create_args` | 25 |
| `crypto_register_template` | 11 |
| `_printk` | 10 |
| `crypto_register_alg` | 10 |
| `__register_nls` | 9 |
| `crypto_register_shash` | 4 |
| `af_alg_register_type` | 4 |
| `register_filesystem`, `misc_register`, … | 2 each |
**Forty-four distinct symbols would carry every one of those 110 modules
through `init_module`.** That is a small enough number to be a plan rather than
an estimate, and it is not a number anybody could have guessed — the slab
allocator at the top, and a long tail of registration calls that mostly want to
record a pointer and return zero.
It says nothing about `probe()`, which is where the real surface is and which
the kernel, not the module, is supposed to call. Reaching that is L2.
---
## What it will not do