From 6208721f1399912a0a53c77ed86dcc25d3e20efb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: David Hildenbrand Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2021 19:56:31 +0200 Subject: binfmt: remove support for em86 (alpha only) We have a fairly specific alpha binary loader in Linux: running x86 (i386, i486) binaries via the em86 [1] emulator. As noted in the Kconfig option, the same behavior can be achieved via binfmt_misc, for example, more nowadays used for running qemu-user. An example on how to get binfmt_misc running with em86 can be found in Documentation/admin-guide/binfmt-misc.rst The defconfig does not have CONFIG_BINFMT_EM86=y set. And doing a make defconfig && make olddefconfig results in # CONFIG_BINFMT_EM86 is not set ... as we don't seem to have any supported Linux distirbution for alpha anymore, there isn't really any "default" user of that feature anymore. Searching for "CONFIG_BINFMT_EM86=y" reveals mostly discussions from around 20 years ago, like [2] describing how to get netscape via em86 running via em86, or [3] discussing that running wine or installing Win 3.11 through em86 would be a nice feature. The latest binaries available for em86 are from 2000, version 2.2.1 [4] -- which translates to "unsupported"; further, em86 doesn't even work with glibc-2.x but only with glibc-2.0 [4, 5]. These are clear signs that there might not be too many em86 users out there, especially users relying on modern Linux kernels. Even though the code footprint is relatively small, let's just get rid of this blast from the past that's effectively unused. [1] http://ftp.dreamtime.org/pub/linux/Linux-Alpha/em86/v0.4/docs/em86.html [2] https://static.lwn.net/1998/1119/a/alpha-netscape.html [3] https://groups.google.com/g/linux.debian.alpha/c/AkGuQHeCe0Y [4] http://zeniv.linux.org.uk/pub/linux/alpha/em86/v2.2-1/relnotes.2.2.1.html [5] https://forum.teamspeak.com/archive/index.php/t-1477.html Cc: Alexander Viro Cc: Richard Henderson Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky Cc: Matt Turner Cc: Linus Torvalds Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman Cc: Jonathan Corbet Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org Cc: linux-api@vger.kernel.org Cc: linux-alpha@vger.kernel.org Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand Signed-off-by: Matt Turner --- fs/Makefile | 1 - 1 file changed, 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'fs/Makefile') diff --git a/fs/Makefile b/fs/Makefile index 9c708e1fbe8f..f98f3e691c37 100644 --- a/fs/Makefile +++ b/fs/Makefile @@ -39,7 +39,6 @@ obj-$(CONFIG_FS_ENCRYPTION) += crypto/ obj-$(CONFIG_FS_VERITY) += verity/ obj-$(CONFIG_FILE_LOCKING) += locks.o obj-$(CONFIG_BINFMT_AOUT) += binfmt_aout.o -obj-$(CONFIG_BINFMT_EM86) += binfmt_em86.o obj-$(CONFIG_BINFMT_MISC) += binfmt_misc.o obj-$(CONFIG_BINFMT_SCRIPT) += binfmt_script.o obj-$(CONFIG_BINFMT_ELF) += binfmt_elf.o -- cgit