Re: The effect of the kernel version on am-utils
On 09/09/13 14:07, Yoram Bar Haim wrote:
> this work-around will make program think they run on top of 2.6.x
> kernel, which might be a bug if the program does have special behavior
> for 3.x.y
With all due respect, it's a bug in a program if it crashes with a 3.x
uname string. If it then also misbehaves if it's given a 2.6.x string,
it's no more or less a bug in the program. In either case, the broken
program needs fixing.
The option to present a 2.6.x uname was done mostly as a hack for 3rd
party software for which it can be difficult to obtain updates. There's
no excuse to use this hack for software that can be built from source.
Personally, I have run into this issue with the 3ware/LSI RAID admin
tools, tw_cli and 3dm2, both of which crash unless there are 3
dot-separated components in the kernel uname string. This annoys me
enough that I build my own kernel with the 3rd element added in (among
other tweaks), but I don't really expect Debian to go back to having
this. What would be welcome is a documented way of building your own
kernel that has this, as currently my hacks to do this are a bit ugly.
I'm pretty sure software developers have been told not to attempt to
parse uname strings as they could be in any format, but that clearly
hasn't stopped anyone. It's still their problem, not the kernel's! :-)
HTH,
Chris
> On Mon, Sep 9, 2013 at 3:49 PM, Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk
> <mailto:ben@decadent.org.uk>> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2013-09-09 at 14:12 +0200, Yoram Bar Haim wrote:
> > using 3.x instead of 3.x.0 (when minor-minor version is 0) is done by
> > kernel.org <http://kernel.org>, so I suppose it makes sense for
> Debian to follow this
> > scheme.
>
> Actually, the '.0' is still included if you build a kernel without any
> stable updates and without Debian patches. But the '3.2.0' in wheezy
> sometimes confuses people into thinking we aren't applying any stable
> updates. I reckoned that userland in wheezy would be ready for 3.x
> releases and so it would be safe to drop the third part in jessie.
>
> By the way, the kernel has a workaround for programs that can't handle
> 3.x.y releases, which also works for 3.x. Use setarch with the
> --uname-2.6 option.
>
> Ben.
>
> > it may be a good idea to run a test that logs all components calling
> > uname, so they can be checked for version scheme bugs.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Sun, Sep 8, 2013 at 5:46 PM, Lior Kaplan <kaplan@debian.org
> <mailto:kaplan@debian.org>> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> >
> >
> > Just FYI, as you might be interested in
> > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=722145
> >
> >
> > Kaplan
> >
> >
> >
>
> --
> Ben Hutchings
> Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain. - Lily
> Tomlin
>
>
--
Chris Boot
bootc@bootc.net
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