linux-kernel - Re: [GIT PULL] Misc driver fix for 5.15-rc1

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Message-ID: <CAHk-=wh7FYyewcJkozsjA95yj0AYvmpMDoZd0RxQ3ZbMMdXUdQ@mail.gmail.com>
Date:   Sun, 12 Sep 2021 12:03:35 -0700
From:   Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:     Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org>
Cc:     Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>,
        Arnd Bergmann <arnd@...db.de>,
        Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
        Kees Cook <keescook@...omium.org>
Subject: Re: [GIT PULL] Misc driver fix for 5.15-rc1

On Sun, Sep 12, 2021 at 7:03 AM Greg KH <gregkh@...uxfoundation.org> wrote:
>
> It resolves a build issue that many people were hitting with your
> current tree [...]

I was like "Oh, serious build problems"..

But as far as I can tell, the "build issue" is that a couple of files
get recompiled every time you add a commit. Ok, that added possibly a
few seconds to the build.

So fixing that is good, but why is that lkdtm driver insisting on
writing the release and machine information AT ALL?

IOW, the fix seems kind of silly. The kernel release information
should just have been removed entirely, because the kernel prints that
out as the very first thing anyway, so 'dmesg' will have something
like

    Linux version 5.14.0-11181-gd8e988b62f94 (torvalds@...en) (clang
version 12.0.1 ...

at the very top.

So I think that whole 'lkdtm_kernel_info' thing is all kinds of pointless.

Could we please just stop pointlessly printing out kernel version data
that  is already available other ways? Just do 'dmesg', or 'uname -r'
or whatever instead of insisting on printing out redundant
information?

           Linus