Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1422789AbWJRToW (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:44:22 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1422790AbWJRToW (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:44:22 -0400 Received: from smtp.osdl.org ([65.172.181.4]:16287 "EHLO smtp.osdl.org") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1422789AbWJRToV (ORCPT ); Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:44:21 -0400 Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:44:15 -0700 From: Andrew Morton To: Cal Peake Cc: Linus Torvalds , Albert Cahalan , linux-kernel , ebiederm@xmission.com Subject: Re: sysctl Message-Id: <20061018124415.e45ece22.akpm@osdl.org> In-Reply-To: References: <787b0d920610181123q1848693ajccf7a91567e54227@mail.gmail.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 2.2.7 (GTK+ 2.8.6; i686-pc-linux-gnu) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1844 Lines: 43 On Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:52:21 -0400 (EDT) Cal Peake wrote: > On Wed, 18 Oct 2006, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > > There's apparently some library functions that has used it in the past, > > and I've seen a few effects of that: > > > > warning: process `wish' used the removed sysctl system call > > > > but the users all had fallback positions, so I don't think anything > > actually broke. > > Agreed, nothing seems to have broken by removing it but the warnings sure > are ugly. Is there any reason to have them? If a program relies on sysctl > and the call fails the program should properly handle the error. That > should be all the warning that's needed (i.e. report the broken program > and get it fixed). We should have added the sysctl numbers to that warning. Lots of things do sysctl(KERN_VERSION), including FC5's date(1). Andi's proposal to put some hard-wired KERN_VERSION emulator in there sounds reasonable to me, depending upon how many other things we'll need to emulate (which we don't know yet). > > (The situation may be different with older libraries, which is why it's > > still an option to compile in sysctl. None of the machines I had access > > to cared at all, though). > > So leave it as is for now, default to off with option to compile in if > EMBEDDED and then remove it completely in a few months? It should always be an objective to remove code if we can feasibly find a way to do so. For us to give up now and to leave all that goop in there forever would be sad. A patch which enhances that printk would be appreciated... - 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/