From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [23.128.96.18]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0AE65C433F5 for ; Fri, 14 Jan 2022 19:09:26 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S243915AbiANTJZ (ORCPT ); Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:09:25 -0500 Received: from mail.skyhub.de ([5.9.137.197]:47118 "EHLO mail.skyhub.de" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S231557AbiANTJX (ORCPT ); Fri, 14 Jan 2022 14:09:23 -0500 Received: from zn.tnic (dslb-088-067-202-008.088.067.pools.vodafone-ip.de [88.67.202.8]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.skyhub.de (SuperMail on ZX Spectrum 128k) with ESMTPSA id CAA371EC050F; Fri, 14 Jan 2022 20:09:17 +0100 (CET) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=alien8.de; s=dkim; t=1642187357; h=from:from:reply-to:subject:subject:date:date:message-id:message-id: to:to:cc:cc:mime-version:mime-version:content-type:content-type: content-transfer-encoding:in-reply-to:in-reply-to: references:references; bh=PPHXW8DmjPUYqTAYqj9c9oaDkHSWzmjopWoY/gnxiTg=; b=qUPSsGci9EXKVVx9R6VGzmmvpb8ZH2QyHxkmyBTvxYODI7Zkb5c+mWGs/au08Q5E61zueM rAAh2bpnT1G4Y5LMkaCh9jKKfYCrl5YrsahDwBL/XXoGo9XjAFyxXokTEgbsipwXIK/eiq 4v8goGrAFjF2e0P9O3RNreTNDD6IPDg= Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2022 20:09:21 +0100 From: Borislav Petkov To: Theodore Ts'o Cc: X86 ML , Arnd Bergmann , Eric Biederman , Kees Cook , LKML Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86: Remove a.out support Message-ID: References: <20220113160115.5375-1-bp@alien8.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Just to answer the "do we still wanna support running original a.out binaries" aspect... On Thu, Jan 13, 2022 at 11:06:03PM -0500, Theodore Ts'o wrote: > > > Let's pour one out for being able to run Minix binaries on Linux. :-) > > > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minix_3: > > > > "2013-02-21 ... Dropped support for a.out binaries" > > > > They themselves killed that support a lot earlier. :-) > > Well, Minix 3 is a very different beast than the Minix 1.x Right, but if the Minix 1.x successor has deemed a.out support obsolete and has removed in 2013 I figure we can too. :-) And, btw, Alan had a good, practical idea at the time we talked about deprecating a.out support: https://lore.kernel.org/all/20190305134347.4be2449c@alans-desktop/ And that is probably the best thing to do: if people wanna run old a.out binaries, they can either write an a.out loader as an ELF program or slap an old linux distro in a VM and do that there just fine. If you look at the original thread which started this: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAG48ez1RVd5mQ_Pb6eygQESaZhpQz765OAZYSoPE0kPqfZEXQg@mail.gmail.com/ it looked even back then like a.out support is so rusty, bitrotten and broken that we're probably even doing ourselves a favor to remove it. Especially if not even the toolchains would even create an a.out executable and no one even noticed. So... > that Linus used when he was boot-strapping Linux back in 1991. :-) > > Among other things Minux 1.x is system call compatible with the > original V7 Unix from AT&T, whereas Minux 2.x and higher switch to > having system calls that were Posix comaptible --- and Minix 2, being > at teaching OS, wouldn't have kept any backwards compatibility when > Prof. Tannenbaum released the 2nd edition of his Operating Systems > Design and Implementation book in 1997. I had a lot of fun reading that book. :-) -- Regards/Gruss, Boris. https://people.kernel.org/tglx/notes-about-netiquette