Re: Request: Regarding the phasing out of "a.out support" in Linux Kernels

From: Borislav Petkov
Date: Sat Apr 09 2022 - 18:56:01 EST


[ Readding back previous recipients. ]

On Sat, Apr 09, 2022 at 05:16:52PM +0100, NULL wrote:
> Thank you for your reply, I was hoping more that the 327 aout.o lines would
> remain in makefile & arch /ia32/ia32_aout.c for 5.19 (even if ignored by
> default KConfig flags as a test to see if it would break anything for
> other) as opposed to the currently proposed PR.
>
> https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip.git/diff/?h=x86/cleanups&id=f9444ea5e20847d1dd4a98d4dff4cc97655834bb
>
> Essentially just asking for 5.19 to announce the proposed removal & to
> hold/push the ia32 commits back by one or two releases, With complete
> removal of all the code only occurring in 5.21's Release.

First of all, please hit "reply-to-all" when replying to a mail on a
public mailing list so that others can see the conversation too and can
participate, if they wish.

Then, it is kinda hard to take you seriously if your name is "NULL" or
"Non Null". If I'm using my real name - you could too.

Furthermore, you haven't given any concrete reason why you'd need this
except maybe something along the lines that it might be good to have it
in an LTS release. And that's not nearly a good reason to keep ancient
code which no one uses and which current toolchains can't even produce.

If you've followed the previous discussions, there was a pretty simple
ELF loader posted for a.out executables so it's not like there are no
alternatives. You can also run an older kernel in a VM. And so on...

Finally, pls do not top-post but put your reply underneath the next
you're commenting on like I just did.

Thx.

--
Regards/Gruss,
Boris.

https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette