[wplug-bsd] Patching a driver

[Poyner, Brandon]

> Well, I can confirm that 'ls -l' displays 0 hard links for 
> all files and 
> directories on the mounted filesystem. That's not right, right?

It's not right for a unix filesystem.  Since this is NTFS I couldn't
say.  It would be interesting to see how Linux handles this.

> Looking in the handbook, it seems that I can specify a list 
> of modules to 
> build with the MODULES_OVERRIDE directive in make.conf... is 
> there a way 
> (also, is it responsible) to not build the kernel itself?  I think my 
> /usr/obj tree is still fully populated, and I would love to 
> be able to 
> build just this module.

Assuming your kernel config is named GENERIC, you should be able to 
'make buildkernel KERNCONF=GENERIC -DNOCLEAN' while in /usr/src and use
the old objective files.  I don't see an option in /usr/src/Makefile for
building the modules only, but my system is pretty old.  It appears to
work for me, I was able to build a new ntfs.ko and kldload it, of course
I don't have a ntfs filesystem to try it out on.

> It doesn't seem like a fix to a non-critical, low-priority 
> bug in what 
> really amounts to a legacy driver will be forthcoming.  
> Furthermore, from 
> the bug report it appears the maintaner is aware of the fix 
> and probably 
> not interested in applying it since it is, after all, a hack (simply 
> report '1' link instead of '0' so that Samba doesn't break).  
> It's still 
> not the correct number of links, and so, not a proper fix.

It's really your call there.  The maintainer won't likely patch the
module if people aren't requesting it.  You could also go the other
direction and make your own patch for samba and not the kernel.  

Brandon Poyner
Network Engineer III
CCAC - College Office
412-237-3086