Re: Linux-2.5.17

[Nick.Holloway@pyrites.org.uk (Nick Holloway)]

In <86256BC1.001146A6.00@smtpnotes.altec.com> Wayne.Brown@altec.com writes:
> I can live with not building, crashing, or even eating filesystems.  Those
> things will be fixed sooner or later.  But breaking userspace programs -- that
> may well be permanent.

Looking at the source code to libgtop-1.0.6 (the version I have
easy access to), the parser used to extract the swap information from
/proc/meminfo is extremely fragile (read: broken).  Rather than looking
at the tag at the start of each line for the one it requires, it assumes
that the "Swap:" details are on the 3rd line (and doesn't even verify
the label).

You can't expect the kernel to keep compatability for such poor user-space
code (especially during a development cycle).

The change to /proc/meminfo came about in 2.5.1, and this removed
the first two lines from the old, inflexible layout (that has been
deprecated for a while, and should probably been removed during the
2.1.x development cycle).

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