A Clash of Things

Explore a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session from the Linux Plumbers Conference 2022 that delves into the challenges of disambiguating duplicate kernel symbol names. Learn about the proposed kallmodsyms feature and its potential to solve ambiguity issues in the kernel symbol table. Discover how this solution could benefit tracers and debugging tools by allowing them to distinguish between functions with identical names in different translation units. Examine examples illustrating the current limitations and discuss the necessary steps for upstream acceptance of this feature. Gain insights into the complexities of kernel symbol management and the ongoing efforts to improve tracing and debugging capabilities in the Linux kernel.