Re: [CFT] Grep to find users of sys_sysctl.

Albert Cahalan
2006-10-20T15:18:59Z

On 10/20/06, Eric W. Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com> wrote:
> Jakub Jelinek <jakub@redhat.com> writes:
>
> > This assumes the binaries and/or libraries are not stripped, and they
> > usually are stripped. So, it is better to run something like:
> > find / -type f -perm /111 | while read f; do readelf -Ws $f 2>/dev/null | fgrep
> > -q sysctl@GLIBC && echo $f; done
>
> Russell King <rmk+lkml@arm.linux.org.uk> writes:
> > glibc on ARM _requires_ sys_sysctl for userspace ioperm, inb, outb etc
> > emulation.
>
>
> It looks like we have a small but interesting set of sysctl users.
>
> The list of files below is a composite from a number of systems I have
> access to, and the reply I have gotten so far. I'm still hoping to hear
> from other people so I can add some other users of sysctl to my list.

So does Linux now only support GLIBC apps? That's what your
grep seems to imply. At least one of the free Pascal compilers
does not use GLIBC. You won't find a GLIBC sysctl symbol in
any of the alternate C libraries (there are many) or even in libc5.

Running your grep on developer machines is highly biased
against legacy business apps.

Despite the desires of some fanatics, Linux does support an ABI
which is used by closed-source apps. Sometimes people even
lose their source code, perhaps via corporate reorganization.
I don't expect you plan to help anybody whose business depends
on some crufty old software...?

We have lots worse cruft if you want to go on a cleaning rampage.
We have old syscalls that can't handle modern data types.