Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1762369AbWLKVU4 (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:20:56 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1762594AbWLKVU4 (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:20:56 -0500 Received: from terminus.zytor.com ([192.83.249.54]:51727 "EHLO terminus.zytor.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1762369AbWLKVU4 (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Dec 2006 16:20:56 -0500 Message-ID: <457DCAA1.7000705@zytor.com> Date: Mon, 11 Dec 2006 13:16:17 -0800 From: "H. Peter Anvin" User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 (X11/20061107) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Theodore Tso , Andy Whitcroft , Linus Torvalds , Herbert Poetzl , Olaf Hering , Andi Kleen , Andrew Morton , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Steve Fox Subject: Re: 2.6.19-git13: uts banner changes break SLES9 (at least) References: <457D750C.9060807@shadowen.org> <20061211163333.GA17947@aepfle.de> <20061211180414.GA18833@aepfle.de> <20061211181813.GB18963@aepfle.de> <20061211182908.GC7256@MAIL.13thfloor.at> <457DAF99.4050106@shadowen.org> <20061211201552.GB20960@thunk.org> In-Reply-To: <20061211201552.GB20960@thunk.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1125 Lines: 25 Theodore Tso wrote: > > As far as whether or not it should be _mandatory_, to be able to pull > out the version information from an arbitrary bzImage file, can folks > agree that it would at least be a nice-to-have feature? Sometimes > when you're out in the field you don't know what you're faced with, > especially if you're dealing with a customer who likes to build their > own kernels, and who might not have, ah, a very well defined release > process. Sure, you can _call_ them incompetent, and it might even be > true, but wouldn't be nice if there was an easy way to look at a > bzImage file and be able to tell what kernel version it was built > from? > There is a documented procedure for doing exactly that. See Documentation/i386/boot.txt for details; there is a pointer in the header which points to a cleartext string, even if the kernel is compressed. -hpa - 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/