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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt | 35 |
1 files changed, 35 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt b/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt index 280ec06573e6..5b25162cd9a4 100644 --- a/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt +++ b/Documentation/feature-removal-schedule.txt @@ -82,6 +82,41 @@ Who: Dominik Brodowski <linux@brodo.de> --------------------------- +What: sys_sysctl +When: September 2010 +Option: CONFIG_SYSCTL_SYSCALL +Why: The same information is available in a more convenient from + /proc/sys, and none of the sysctl variables appear to be + important performance wise. + + Binary sysctls are a long standing source of subtle kernel + bugs and security issues. + + When I looked several months ago all I could find after + searching several distributions were 5 user space programs and + glibc (which falls back to /proc/sys) using this syscall. + + The man page for sysctl(2) documents it as unusable for user + space programs. + + sysctl(2) is not generally ABI compatible to a 32bit user + space application on a 64bit and a 32bit kernel. + + For the last several months the policy has been no new binary + sysctls and no one has put forward an argument to use them. + + Binary sysctls issues seem to keep happening appearing so + properly deprecating them (with a warning to user space) and a + 2 year grace warning period will mean eventually we can kill + them and end the pain. + + In the mean time individual binary sysctls can be dealt with + in a piecewise fashion. + +Who: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> + +--------------------------- + What: a.out interpreter support for ELF executables When: 2.6.25 Files: fs/binfmt_elf.c |
