From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Matthew Wilcox Subject: Re: a.out coredumping: fix or delete? Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2019 04:22:18 -0800 Message-ID: <20190305122218.GD13380@bombadil.infradead.org> References: <20190305091904.GB8256@zn.tnic> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Return-path: Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20190305091904.GB8256@zn.tnic> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org To: Borislav Petkov Cc: Jann Horn , Al Viro , Thomas Gleixner , kernel list , linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org, the arch/x86 maintainers , Linux API List-Id: linux-api@vger.kernel.org On Tue, Mar 05, 2019 at 10:19:04AM +0100, Borislav Petkov wrote: > On Sat, Mar 02, 2019 at 12:57:30AM +0100, Jann Horn wrote: > > In theory, Linux can dump cores for a.out binaries. In practice, that > > code is pretty bitrotten and buggy. Does anyone want that code so much > > that they'd like to fix it, or can we just delete it? > > I was asking myself the same question while doing > > 10970e1b4be9 ("x86/a.out: Clear the dump structure initially") > > especially since it is kinda hard to get the toolchain to even create an > a.out executable - your script to create one case-in-point. It's been 25 years since Linux added support for ELF. Can we just delete the a.out support entirely now? According to the Linux-ELF HOWTO, support was added in 1.1.52 (August 1994). It's pretty much necromancy at this point.