Bug#3065: lsof looks for /System.map

[Dominik Kubla <dominik.kubla@uni-mainz.de>]

>>>>> Ian Jackson writes:

> Why does lsof need to read System.map at all ?  Can't it get the
> information it needs from /proc ?

No: the contents of System.map and /proc/ksyms differ!  The later has
only the exported symbols needed for kernel modules, while the first
has all kernel symbols!

And this is not really a bug, since the kernel installation script
takes care that the symlink (i never had a problem with lsof!)

 /System.map -> /boot/System.map-<VERSION>

is up to date.  For those of you installing their own kernels or using
more than one that is something trivial to fix at boot time: just add
the following line to /etc/init.d/boot (Miquel could you do that
please?):

 ln -s /boot/System.map-`uname -r` /System.map

> We should be trying to phase out programs that grobble through
> kernel memory ...

Which it does not, it does only read the kernel symbols from the named
file. (For the reason: see above)

I will reassign this bug report to the sysvinit package, so that Miquel
can close it when he releases the next sysvinit.

Later,
  Dominik