Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S261842AbTILSWe (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Sep 2003 14:22:34 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S261840AbTILSVI (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Sep 2003 14:21:08 -0400 Received: from fed1mtao03.cox.net ([68.6.19.242]:17630 "EHLO fed1mtao03.cox.net") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S261838AbTILSUi (ORCPT ); Fri, 12 Sep 2003 14:20:38 -0400 Message-ID: <3F620E7B.4090706@cox.net> Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2003 11:20:43 -0700 From: "Kevin P. Fleming" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 X-Accept-Language: en-us, en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: LKML Subject: 2.6.0-test5 _IOR/_IOW changes are breaking userspace Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1654 Lines: 31 Sorry to bring up this discussion again, but the situation is getting worse. Previously, it was only apps that needed to issue sysctls that would break with the new kernel headers. As of 2.6.0-test5, many apps that issue ioctls can no longer be compiled using the kernel headers that they have always used. So far this morning I have found three parts of util-linux-2.12, and at least one in mdadm-1.3.0. As I continue my build I suspect device-mapper, xfsprogs, mt-st and others will also have failures. The worst part is that the changes required to get the apps to compile are incompatible with all previous kernel headers. As things get closer to 2.6.0 (for real), this is going to become a larger and larger problem. Without a set of userspace-compatible kernel headers available (and it sounds like the project to do that for real is 2.7 material), userspace applications have to be compiled against older "sanitized" headers that may not include new kernel features at all. In the particular case of the ioctls used by util-linux and mdadm, using the RedHat "sanitized" headers would not be a problem. However, I want to compile device-mappper using its new version 4 ioctls, which I suspect are not included in the sanitized headers because they are not in 2.4 at all. I also need my kernel header package to include XFS headers, and they are not a standard part of 2.4 either. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/