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Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:16:04 -0800 (PST)
From: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
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To: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@xmission.com>
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Subject: Re: [PATCH] SYSCTL: Fix sysctl breakage on systems with older
 glibc
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On Thu, 17 Dec 2009, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
> 
> As for glibc.  The usage in glibc before glibc 2.5 does not count as a
> user space application that cares.  You can return any string or
> -ENOSYS and glibc works fine.

Annoying and pointless messages that flood your terminals etc is not 
"fine".

Backwards compatibility is more than "technically it still works". It's 
something almost sacred.

		Linus