Re: [RFC PATCH] cmdline: Hide "debug" from /proc/cmdline

From: "John Stoffel" <john@stoffel.org>
To: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: John Stoffel <john@stoffel.org>,
	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>,
	Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net>,
	"Theodore Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu>, Joerg Roedel <joro@8bytes.org>,
	Jiri Kosina <jkosina@suse.cz>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>,
	Mateusz Guzik <mguzik@redhat.com>,
	Steven Rostedt <rostedt@goodmis.org>,
	LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>,
	Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>,
	"H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>, Borislav Petkov <bp@alien8.de>,
	Ingo Molnar <mingo@kernel.org>, Mel Gorman <mgorman@suse.de>,
	Kay Sievers <kay@vrfy.org>
Subject: Re: [RFC PATCH] cmdline: Hide "debug" from /proc/cmdline
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2014 10:37:59 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <21312.5447.611685.217995@quad.stoffel.home> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20140404231749.GA20437@kroah.com>

>>>>> "Greg" == Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org> writes:

Greg> On Fri, Apr 04, 2014 at 05:17:09PM -0400, John Stoffel wrote:
>> >>>>> "Linus" == Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> writes:
>> 
Linus> On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 11:21 AM, Andy Lutomirski <luto@amacapital.net> wrote:
>> >> 
>> >> The other thing I've used /dev/kmsg for is to shove a "I'm starting
>> >> something now" message in.  This is only really necessary because the
>> >> current kernel log timestamps are unusable crap.  (We could fix that,
>> >> hint hint.)
>> 
Linus> I'd actually love to fix that, but I disagree with the "we could fix
Linus> it". There are tons of people who know how to parse them (admittedly
Linus> often only to ignore them), so changing the format is not likely to
Linus> work.
>> 
Linus> The good news is that "dmesg -H" does help if you're
Linus> human. While at the same time being an example of that very
Linus> "there are tools that know about the current horrid format"
Linus> issue.. D'oh.
>> 
>> I think you mean "dmesg -T", and unfortunately it seems Debian 6.0.9
>> (or older) doesn ship a new enough linux-util since I've only got
>> 2.17.2-9 install.  

Greg> No, 'dmesg -H' is the right thing, you just need a modern version of
Greg> util-linux :)

Probably.  But I'm working within my limitations, esp at work we can
upgrade too aggresively because of support needs for the tools we
use.  And at home... usually Debian is pretty good about updates like
this, but for my main NAS box, I'm not aggresive either.

>> And RHEL/Centos 5.6 and 6.5 don't seem to ship that by default either,
>> they have got util-linux-2.13-0.56.el5 and
>> util-linux-ng-2.17.2-12.14.el6.x86_64 respectively.  Blech!  It's in
>> Linux Mint 16 at least, haven't checked older versions.

Greg> util-linux is on version 2.24.1 at the moment:
Greg> 	https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/v2.24/
Greg> 	2.17.2 was from back in 2012, I think it's time to switch to a
Greg> 	modern distro...

2012 isn't ancient... :-)  2002 is ancient.  And I still run some
Solaris 5.8 hosts at work from that era.  

John