linux-kernel - Re: Linux 4.9.256

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Message-ID: <87czxa3efr.fsf@oldenburg.str.redhat.com>
Date:   Mon, 08 Feb 2021 13:57:12 +0100
From:   Florian Weimer <fweimer@...hat.com>
To:     Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Cc:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org, akpm@...ux-foundation.org,
        torvalds@...ux-foundation.org, stable@...r.kernel.org, lwn@....net,
        jslaby@...e.cz
Subject: Re: Linux 4.9.256

* Greg Kroah-Hartman:

> I'm announcing the release of the 4.9.256 kernel.
>
> This, and the 4.4.256 release are a little bit "different" than normal.
>
> This contains only 1 patch, just the version bump from .255 to .256 which ends
> up causing the userspace-visable LINUX_VERSION_CODE to behave a bit differently
> than normal due to the "overflow".
>
> With this release, KERNEL_VERSION(4, 9, 256) is the same as KERNEL_VERSION(4, 10, 0).
>
> Nothing in the kernel build itself breaks with this change, but given
> that this is a userspace visible change, and some crazy tools (like
> glibc and gcc) have logic that checks the kernel version for different
> reasons, I wanted to do this release as an "empty" release to ensure
> that everything still works properly.

I'm looking at this from a glibc perspective.  glibc took the
KERNEL_VERSION definition and embedded the bit layout into the
/etc/ld.so.cache, as part of the file format.  Exact impact is still
unclear at this point.

Thanks,
Florian
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