KERNELD(8)

NAME
kerneld - perform kernel action in user space (such as on-demand loading of modules)

WARNING
kerneld is obsolete as of Linux kernel 2.1.90, it was replaced by the kmod kernel thread and cron entries. Do not even think of using kerneld unless you are running a 2.0 kernel.

SYNOPSIS
kerneld [ debug ] [ keep ] [ delay=<seconds> ] [ type=<message number> ]

DESCRIPTION
Apart from automatically removing unused modules, kerneld also performs specific kernel tasks in user space by responding to requests from the kernel via a dedicated IPC message queue. Access to this queue can be made from user space by opening the queue with:
    qid = msgget(IPC_PRIVATE, 0600 | IPC_KERNELD); A specific task is requested with the message type, as specified in <linux/kerneld.h>.

The structure of a kerneld message is:
	struct kerneld_msg {
		long mtype;
		long id;
		char text[1];
	};
where the id field is used as the number of the response message from kerneld back to the kernel. If the id field is zero, there will be no response from kerneld.
(Note that a new structure is proposed that will include the pid of the requestor into the protocol header.) If a response was requested, the exit status of the kerneld action will be stored in the id field. The text field us used to hold the parameters from the kernel to the specified kerneld action. In return messages, this field can contain the output from the action, to be used (if wanted) by the kernel.

The options are as follows:

debug
    Whith debugging enabled, you will be able to see the current status of kerneld as it performs its tasks. Note that you can control debugging, as well as all the other parameters via the utility kdstat.

keep
    The keep option makes kerneld ignore all requests for unloading modules. This option might be usable for systems where the modules should never be unloaded at all (for some reason or other). This option also inhibits the automatic removal of unused modules that kerneld performs every minute (or <delay> seconds).

delay=<seconds>
    The delay option will change the timeout in kerneld for delayed removal of modules from the default 60 seconds to whatever the choice was.

type=<message type>
    The default type is -255, which means that kerneld will listen for all messages where the type is less than or equal to 255. If a positive number is given, kerneld will only listen for that message type.

kerneld sends error messages to the syslog facility LOG_DAEMON.

SEE ALSO
insmod(8), rmmod(8), modprobe(8), depmod(8), syslogd(8)

HISTORY
The kerneld support was inspired by discussions with Jacques Gelinas <jack@solucorp.qc.ca>