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David Hildenbrand 6208721f13 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 <viro@zeniv.linux.org.uk>
Cc: Richard Henderson <rth@twiddle.net>
Cc: Ivan Kokshaysky <ink@jurassic.park.msu.ru>
Cc: Matt Turner <mattst88@gmail.com>
Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>
Cc: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
Cc: Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net>
Cc: linux-fsdevel@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-api@vger.kernel.org
Cc: linux-alpha@vger.kernel.org
Signed-off-by: David Hildenbrand <david@redhat.com>
Signed-off-by: Matt Turner <mattst88@gmail.com>
2021-07-25 22:33:03 -07:00
arch alpha: fix typos in a comment 2021-07-25 22:33:03 -07:00
block block-5.14-2021-07-08 2021-07-09 12:05:33 -07:00
certs Kbuild updates for v5.13 (2nd) 2021-05-08 10:00:11 -07:00
crypto Merge branch 'linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/herbert/crypto-2.6 2021-07-09 11:00:44 -07:00
Documentation userfaultfd: do not untag user pointers 2021-07-23 17:43:28 -07:00
drivers A set of EFI fixes: 2021-07-25 10:04:27 -07:00
fs binfmt: remove support for em86 (alpha only) 2021-07-25 22:33:03 -07:00
include ACPI: fix NULL pointer dereference 2021-07-24 15:25:54 -07:00
init Revert "mm/slub: use stackdepot to save stack trace in objects" 2021-07-17 13:27:00 -07:00
ipc Merge branch 'akpm' (patches from Andrew) 2021-07-02 12:08:10 -07:00
kernel smpboot: fix duplicate and misplaced inlining directive 2021-07-25 11:06:37 -07:00
lib lib/test_hmm: remove set but unused page variable 2021-07-15 10:13:49 -07:00
LICENSES LICENSES/dual/CC-BY-4.0: Git rid of "smart quotes" 2021-07-15 06:31:24 -06:00
mm mm: fix the deadlock in finish_fault() 2021-07-23 17:43:28 -07:00
net net: sched: cls_api: Fix the the wrong parameter 2021-07-22 00:48:03 -07:00
samples Networking fixes for 5.14-rc2, including fixes from bpf and netfilter. 2021-07-14 09:24:32 -07:00
scripts Kbuild fixes for v5.14 2021-07-18 11:10:30 -07:00
security asm-generic/unaligned: Unify asm/unaligned.h around struct helper 2021-07-02 12:43:40 -07:00
sound sound fixes for 5.14-rc3 2021-07-23 09:58:23 -07:00
tools selftest: use mmap instead of posix_memalign to allocate memory 2021-07-23 17:43:28 -07:00
usr .gitignore: prefix local generated files with a slash 2021-05-02 00:43:35 +09:00
virt * Allow again loading KVM on 32-bit non-PAE builds 2021-07-15 11:56:07 -07:00
.clang-format clang-format: Update with the latest for_each macro list 2021-05-12 23:32:39 +02:00
.cocciconfig
.get_maintainer.ignore Opt out of scripts/get_maintainer.pl 2019-05-16 10:53:40 -07:00
.gitattributes .gitattributes: use 'dts' diff driver for dts files 2019-12-04 19:44:11 -08:00
.gitignore .gitignore: ignore only top-level modules.builtin 2021-05-02 00:43:35 +09:00
.mailmap m68k updates for v5.14 2021-06-28 14:01:03 -07:00
COPYING COPYING: state that all contributions really are covered by this file 2020-02-10 13:32:20 -08:00
CREDITS MAINTAINERS: move Murali Karicheri to credits 2021-04-29 15:47:30 -07:00
Kbuild kbuild: rename hostprogs-y/always to hostprogs/always-y 2020-02-04 01:53:07 +09:00
Kconfig kbuild: ensure full rebuild when the compiler is updated 2020-05-12 13:28:33 +09:00
MAINTAINERS Char/Misc fixes for 5.14-rc3 2021-07-23 10:14:56 -07:00
Makefile Linux 5.14-rc3 2021-07-25 15:35:14 -07:00
README Drop all 00-INDEX files from Documentation/ 2018-09-09 15:08:58 -06:00

Linux kernel
============

There are several guides for kernel developers and users. These guides can
be rendered in a number of formats, like HTML and PDF. Please read
Documentation/admin-guide/README.rst first.

In order to build the documentation, use ``make htmldocs`` or
``make pdfdocs``.  The formatted documentation can also be read online at:

    https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/

There are various text files in the Documentation/ subdirectory,
several of them using the Restructured Text markup notation.

Please read the Documentation/process/changes.rst file, as it contains the
requirements for building and running the kernel, and information about
the problems which may result by upgrading your kernel.