[PATCH] new kallsyms approach

["Jan Beulich" <JBeulich@novell.com>]

(Note: Patch only attached due to size restrictions.)

This patch provides al alternative to the pre-exisiting kallsyms code.
That code, from a kernel debugger perspective at least, suffers from
incomplete information, making it impossible to
(a) disambiguate multiple static functions of the same name (in
different
source files),
(b) determine a complete set of attributes for a symbol (namely, the
symbol's size, but also its type, which gets converted to an nm-like
one-
character representation), and
(c) retain full section information

This new approach basically makes handling core kernel and module
symbols
the same, by retrieving the kernel's section, symbol, and string
tables
rather than parsing the system map.

At once it adds the functionality to strip unneeded symbols from
modules,
which results in non-neglectable space savings for typical
distributions
(which large amounts of modules).

Signed-off-by: Jan Beulich <jbeulich@novell.com>

Attachment: linux-2.6.13-kallsyms.patch
Description: Binary data