linux-kernel - Re: [REPOST][RFC][PATCH] sysctl: Remove the sysctl system call

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Message-ID: <4c3e4883-706e-fd1b-4f4f-0653eabeb027@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue, 8 Oct 2019 12:30:35 +0200
From:   "Michael Kerrisk (man-pages)" <mtk.manpages@...il.com>
To:     Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>,
        "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>
Cc:     mtk.manpages@...il.com, Florian Weimer <fw@...eb.enyo.de>,
        linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, linux-arch@...r.kernel.org,
        linux-api@...r.kernel.org, Jann Horn <jannh@...gle.com>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>, Helge Deller <deller@....de>
Subject: Re: [REPOST][RFC][PATCH] sysctl: Remove the sysctl system call

On 10/3/19 11:05 PM, Kees Cook wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 03, 2019 at 03:44:32PM -0500, Eric W. Biederman wrote:
>>
>> This system call has been deprecated almost since it was introduced, and none
>> of the common distributions enable it.  The only indication that I can find that
>> anyone might care is that a few of the defconfigs in the kernel enable it.  However
>> that is a small fractions of the defconfigs so I suspect it just a lack of care
>> rather than a reflection of software using the the sysctl system call.
>>
>> As there appear to be no users of the sysctl system call, remove the
>> code so that the proc filesystem can be simplified.
> 
> nitpick: line lengths near 80 characters
> 
>> Signed-off-by: "Eric W. Biederman" <ebiederm@...ssion.com>
> 
> But, yes, I would love to see this gone. :)
> 
> Reviewed-by: Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>

And for the record, the manual page has since 2007 documented that 
this system call is likely to go away in the future.

Cheers,

Michael


-- 
Michael Kerrisk
Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/
Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/