modules: add CONFIG_MODPROBE_PATH
Allow the developer to specifiy the initial value of the modprobe_path[] string. This can be used to set it to the empty string initially, thus effectively disabling request_module() during early boot until userspace writes a new value via the /proc/sys/kernel/modprobe interface. [1] When building a custom kernel (often for an embedded target), it's normal to build everything into the kernel that is needed for booting, and indeed the initramfs often contains no modules at all, so every such request_module() done before userspace init has mounted the real rootfs is a waste of time. This is particularly useful when combined with the previous patch, which made the initramfs unpacking asynchronous - for that to work, it had to make any usermodehelper call wait for the unpacking to finish before attempting to invoke the userspace helper. By eliminating all such (known-to-be-futile) calls of usermodehelper, the initramfs unpacking and the {device,late}_initcalls can proceed in parallel for much longer. For a relatively slow ppc board I'm working on, the two patches combined lead to 0.2s faster boot - but more importantly, the fact that the initramfs unpacking proceeds completely in the background while devices get probed means I get to handle the gpio watchdog in time without getting reset. [1] __request_module() already has an early -ENOENT return when modprobe_path is the empty string. Link: https://lkml.kernel.org/r/20210313212528.2956377-3-linux@rasmusvillemoes.dkSigned-off-by: Rasmus Villemoes <linux@rasmusvillemoes.dk> Reviewed-by: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> Acked-by: Jessica Yu <jeyu@kernel.org> Acked-by: Luis Chamberlain <mcgrof@kernel.org> Cc: Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de> Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> Cc: Nick Desaulniers <ndesaulniers@google.com> Cc: Takashi Iwai <tiwai@suse.de> Signed-off-by: Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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