Re: [PATCH] x86/kconfig/32: Mark CONFIG_VM86 as BROKEN

[Thomas Gleixner]

On Tue, 7 Jul 2015, Arjan van de Ven wrote:

> On 7/7/2015 6:25 PM, Andy Lutomirski wrote:
> > VM86 is entirely broken if ptrace, syscall auditing, or NOHZ_FULL is
> > in use.  The code is a big undocumented mess, it's a real PITA to
> > test, and it looks like a big chunk of vm86_32.c is dead code.  It
> > also plays awful games with the entry asm.
> > 
> > No one should be using it anyway.  Use DOSBOX or KVM instead.
> > 
> > Mark it BROKEN.  I want to remove some (obviously incorrect) exit
> > asm that it depends on, and I don't want to figure out how to run
> > severely obsolete programs just to test something that no one uses
> > for anything other than exploits anyway.
> > 
> 
> while it is never great to deprecate features, in this case I am not sure
> there is another choice unless someone steps up to seriously revamp this code.
> (and look at it from a PREEMPT, NO_HZ etc etc angle)

Aside of being broken in so many aspects it's even more obsolete than
386 support, we should just remove it right away.

Thanks,

	tglx
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