Re: a.out coredumping: fix or delete?

Andy Lutomirski
2019-03-06T17:45:29Z

On Wed, Mar 6, 2019 at 8:53 AM Alan Cox <gnomes@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 6 Mar 2019 09:11:44 -0500
> "Theodore Y. Ts'o" <tytso@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Mar 06, 2019 at 01:25:17PM +0100, Thomas Gleixner wrote:
> > > > 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.
> >
> > Doesn't Minix 1.0 use a.out? It *is* cool to be able to binaries from
> > run dead operating systems. :-)
>
> Minixemu compiled fine ELF last time I checked 8). It does need a 32bit
> system as it still uses virtual 86 model.
>

While I consider vm86() to be a giant turd, I also consider it to be
supported and even wrote it a somewhat decent test suite :)