Re: a.out coredumping: fix or delete?

On Tue, 5 Mar 2019, Matthew Wilcox wrote:

On Tue, Mar 05, 2019 at 10:19:04AM +0100, Borislav Petkov wrote:

quoted

On Sat, Mar 02, 2019 at 12:57:30AM +0100, Jann Horn wrote:

quoted

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