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authorJonathan Neuschäfer <j.neuschaefer@gmx.net>2019-01-12 18:14:30 +0100
committerLinus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>2019-01-14 10:38:03 +1200
commitb7285b425318331c2de4af2a784a18e6dccef484 (patch)
tree2fdd7536d93efeb219495968ed0dc948c07773d2
parentdbc3c09b819f2bd42460b148e55ac5a9d83aaeaf (diff)
kernel/sys.c: Clarify that UNAME26 does not generate unique versions anymore
UNAME26 is a mechanism to report Linux's version as 2.6.x, for compatibility with old/broken software. Due to the way it is implemented, it would have to be updated after 5.0, to keep the resulting versions unique. Linus Torvalds argued: "Do we actually need this? I'd rather let it bitrot, and just let it return random versions. It will just start again at 2.4.60, won't it? Anybody who uses UNAME26 for a 5.x kernel might as well think it's still 4.x. The user space is so old that it can't possibly care about differences between 4.x and 5.x, can it? The only thing that matters is that it shows "2.4.<largeenough>", which it will do regardless" Signed-off-by: Jonathan Neuschäfer <j.neuschaefer@gmx.net> Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
-rw-r--r--kernel/sys.c3
1 files changed, 2 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/kernel/sys.c b/kernel/sys.c
index a48cbf1414b8..f7eb62eceb24 100644
--- a/kernel/sys.c
+++ b/kernel/sys.c
@@ -1207,7 +1207,8 @@ DECLARE_RWSEM(uts_sem);
/*
* Work around broken programs that cannot handle "Linux 3.0".
* Instead we map 3.x to 2.6.40+x, so e.g. 3.0 would be 2.6.40
- * And we map 4.x to 2.6.60+x, so 4.0 would be 2.6.60.
+ * And we map 4.x and later versions to 2.6.60+x, so 4.0/5.0/6.0/... would be
+ * 2.6.60.
*/
static int override_release(char __user *release, size_t len)
{