KSYMVERS(1)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so welcome to the KSYMVERS(1) manual page, bestie — it's from the General Commands Manual, and the name is doing exactly what it says on the tin:

ksymvers — a tool to work with Linux-kernel symvers files

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

ksymvers [GENERAL-OPTION]... { compare } [COMMAND-OPTION]... ...

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so ksymvers is a tool that provides functionality to work with symvers files. These files summarize the exported symbols of the kernel and its modules. The data is produced by the modpost utility from the kernel tree. No cap — that's the whole point.

The tool primarily operates with a final symvers file, typically called Module.symvers, as it is produced during a single build of the Linux kernel.

The provided functionality is divided into integrated commands. The only currently available command is compare, which shows the differences between two symvers files.

🎀 GENERAL OPTIONS 🎀

• -d, --debug — Enable debug output. (Yes, debug tea is served.)
• -h, --help — Display global help information and exit.
• --version — Output version information and exit.

👑 COMPARE COMMAND 👑

ksymvers compare [COMPARE-OPTION]... FILE FILE2

The compare command shows the differences between two symvers files. In a typical use case, the first input will point to a reference symvers file and the second input will point to a symvers file from a new build of the Linux kernel. Reference first, new build second — that's the assignment.

Available options 💅

• -h, --help — Display help information for the command and exit.
• --filter-symbol-list=FILE — Consider only symbols that match the patterns in FILE. Filtering is self-care.
• -r FILE, --rules=FILE — Load kABI severity rules from FILE.
• -f TYPE[:FILE], --format=TYPE[:FILE] — Change the output format to TYPE, or write the TYPE-formatted output to FILE.

The TYPE can be one of the following:

• null – produces no output,
• pretty – produces human-readable output in detailed form,
• short – produces human-readable output in compact form,
• symbols – shows only the names of exported symbols that have been added, removed, or modified,
• mod-symbols – shows only the names of exported symbols that have been modified; any additions or removals are omitted.

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

okay so the exit status is 0 on success and 2 if an error occurs. The compare command returns 0 if there are no differences and 1 if there are any (non-tolerated) changes. That's the whole vibe — no differences, no drama.

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• ksymtypes(1)
• suse-kabi-tools(5)

that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 — KSYMVERS(1), from the General Commands Manual. The footer as given doesn't show a separate version number or date, so I'm not inventing one; no cap, just the manual name. 💅✨