> It looks like the video drivers include a "struct video_device" > structure within their own structures, right? Yes, it is allocated/freed by the driver, most seem to simply include one ore more "struct video_device" somewhere in the per-device struct. > That will have to be changed to a pointer to that structure in order > for the lifetime rules to work properly. Hmm. I doubt it will be that simple. struct video_device has a priv field which can be used by the drivers to hook in some driver-private data. That may point into nowhere if struct video_device has a longer live time due to some kobject still being referenced. Wouldn't be a issue for videodev.o itself, but might become a problem for drivers which want add private properties and rely on video_device->priv for finding the per-device data. Problem isn't solved but justed moved to the next corner ... Maybe let video_unregister sleep on a semaphore which gets woken up by the release function? That should make sure the sysfs objects are not referenced any more if video_unregister() returns. I use a similar method in some places when shutting down kernel threads, to make sure it is really stopped before rmmod frees the memory. > Look at the dev file in /sys/class/tty/*, or in /sys/block/hd* or in > /sys/class/usb/*, and so on... I've found the code in drivers/block/genhd.c in the meantime :) Gerd -- sigfault
