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[209.85.167.44]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id r11sm1100858ljb.29.2019.03.11.14.53.05 for (version=TLS1_2 cipher=ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 bits=128/128); Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:53:05 -0700 (PDT) Received: by mail-lf1-f44.google.com with SMTP id 197so478400lfz.3 for ; Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:53:05 -0700 (PDT) X-Received: by 2002:ac2:5088:: with SMTP id f8mr18412143lfm.11.1552340743409; Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:45:43 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20190305091904.GB8256@zn.tnic> <20190305122218.GD13380@bombadil.infradead.org> <20190305134347.4be2449c@alans-desktop> <20190305145717.GD8256@zn.tnic> <20190305173134.GE8256@zn.tnic> <20190305181138.GG8256@zn.tnic> <20190305181808.GH8256@zn.tnic> In-Reply-To: From: Linus Torvalds Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:45:27 -0700 X-Gmail-Original-Message-ID: Message-ID: Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86: Deprecate a.out support To: Arnd Bergmann Cc: =?UTF-8?B?TcOlbnMgUnVsbGfDpXJk?= , Matt Turner , Borislav Petkov , Alan Cox , Matthew Wilcox , Jann Horn , Al Viro , Thomas Gleixner , kernel list , linux-fsdevel , "the arch/x86 maintainers" , Linux API , Andrew Morton , Richard Weinberger , Anton Ivanov , linux-alpha , linux-m68k Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On Mon, Mar 11, 2019 at 2:34 PM Arnd Bergmann wrote: > > The main historic use case I've heard of was running Netscape > Navigator on Alpha Linux, before there was an open source version. > Doing this today to connect to the open internet is probably > a bit pointless, but there may be other use cases. The _really_ main version was that I decided to make my life easier for the initial alpha port by trying to run basic (tested) OSF/1 binaries directly. Netscape may have been one of the binaries people actually ended up using, but it's probably not a reason any more, since the internet has moved past that anyway. > Looking at the system call table in the kernel > (arch/alpha/kernel/syscalls/syscall.tbl), we seem to support a > specific subset that was required for a set of applications, and > not much more. Yeah, it never supported arbitrary binaries, particularly since there's often lots of other issues too with running things like that (ie filesystem layout etc). It worked for normal fairly well behaved stuff, but wasn't ever a full OSF/1 emulation environment. I _suspect_ nobody actually runs any OSF/1 binaries any more, but it would obviously be good to verify that. Your argument that timeval handling was broken _may_ be an indication of that (or may just mean very few apps care). I think we should try the a.out removal and see if anybody notices. Linus