From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.0 (2014-02-07) on aws-us-west-2-korg-lkml-1.web.codeaurora.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=3.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,SPF_PASS autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.0 Received: from mail.kernel.org (mail.kernel.org [198.145.29.99]) by smtp.lore.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 115E8C43381 for ; Mon, 11 Mar 2019 22:12:58 +0000 (UTC) Received: from vger.kernel.org (vger.kernel.org [209.132.180.67]) by mail.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DC49020657 for ; Mon, 11 Mar 2019 22:12:57 +0000 (UTC) Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1728395AbfCKWMw convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Mar 2019 18:12:52 -0400 Received: from unicorn.mansr.com ([81.2.72.234]:37330 "EHLO unicorn.mansr.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1728117AbfCKWMw (ORCPT ); Mon, 11 Mar 2019 18:12:52 -0400 Received: by unicorn.mansr.com (Postfix, from userid 51770) id 1443914CEA; Mon, 11 Mar 2019 22:12:51 +0000 (GMT) From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?M=E5ns_Rullg=E5rd?= To: Linus Torvalds Cc: Arnd Bergmann , 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 Subject: Re: [PATCH] x86: Deprecate a.out support 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> Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2019 22:12:50 +0000 In-Reply-To: (Linus Torvalds's message of "Mon, 11 Mar 2019 14:45:27 -0700") Message-ID: User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/25.3 (gnu/linux) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Sender: linux-fsdevel-owner@vger.kernel.org Precedence: bulk List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Linus Torvalds writes: > 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). Does it count if I fire up an Alpha and run a few OSF/1 binaries right now? :-) -- Måns Rullgård