Re: Someone using COMPAT_SVR4(_32) ?

On Tue, 1 Aug 2017, Maxime Villard wrote:

> Le 01/08/2017 à 00:04, Eduardo Horvath a écrit :
> > On Mon, 31 Jul 2017, Maxime Villard wrote:
> > 
> > > Hi,
> > > Recently, a number of security issues were found in COMPAT_SVR4 and
> > > COMPAT_SVR4_32. Due to lack of maintenance and interest from developers,
> > > these
> > > options are not reliable, and undermine the overall code quality of the
> > > system.
> > > 
> > > I would like to know whether someone here actively uses COMPAT_SVR4 and/or
> > > COMPAT_SVR4_32, and if this use case justifies keeping these options in
> > > the
> > > system. I plan to remove both of them, but I'd like some feedback.
> > > 
> > > Note that these options are now disabled by default.
> > 
> > Don't get rid of COMPAT_SVR4*.  It's used to run Solaris binaries.
> > If you need to run a Solaris binary then trying to reimplement COMPAT_SVR4
> > from scratch is a huge pain compared to just fixing some breakage.
> > 
> > If it isn't enabled then it isn't a security hole.
> 
> You didn't understand what I said. Yes, COMPAT_SVR4 is used to run Solaris
> binaries, it's written on the man page. My question was: which binary exactly?
> And is it a binary that is of overriding importance, that does not exist on
> Linux and is not open source?
> 
> This feature has not been maintained, and is proven unreliable and buggy. It
> is not a critical security issue anymore, because I've indeed disabled it. So
> far it was enabled only because people were saying "it's used to run Solaris
> binaries", but these people never put up some effort to maintain it.
> 
> Having it disabled does not alter the fact that this piece of code will keep
> rotting, and that it undermines the overall code quality of the system.

This is a really silly argument.  Solaris is still under active 
development.  I notice you're not asking about COMPAT_SUNOS for an OS 
that's been dead for 20 years.

Eduardo