Re: a.out coredumping: fix or delete?

Thomas Gleixner
2019-03-06T12:25:29Z

On Tue, 5 Mar 2019, Matthew Wilcox wrote:
> 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.

The Kernel-Necrophilia cult members might disagree. :)

But yes, good riddance.

Thanks,

tglx