Kernel mods and RTIngres

[Howard Walter <howard>]

	At BRL, we have been running the two latest versions of commercial
Ingres produced by Relational Technology.  Version 2.0 required kernel
modifications to implement a lock driver in order for RTIngres to run in
multi-user mode.  Version 2.1, the latest version for Unix, requires a
binary-only module to be linked with the normal kernel routines.

	Mike Scott, R. T. Director for New Environments (415-769-1400),
told me that sockets couldn't be used for the lock driver since that
would only work on 4.2 systems and shared memory was out since that
only worked on Sys5; kernel mods would work on any version of UNIX.

	We are concerned about the security implications of binary-only
modules added to our kernel.  We are also having problems trying to run
RTIngres on newer kernels (pre-4.3).  Relational Technology would be happy
to sell us the source for the kernel mod (as well as the rest of RTIngres)
for only a few hundreds of thousands of dollars!

	Is anyone else running RTIngres?  How do you feel about using
binary-only modules in your kernel?
	
Howard Walter
howard at brl
...seismo!brl-bmd!howard