---------------------------
-What: MXSER
-When: December 2007
-Why: Old mxser driver is obsoleted by the mxser_new. Give it some time yet
- and remove it.
-Who: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com>
-
----------------------------
-
-What: V4L2 VIDIOC_G_MPEGCOMP and VIDIOC_S_MPEGCOMP
-When: October 2007
-Why: Broken attempt to set MPEG compression parameters. These ioctls are
- not able to implement the wide variety of parameters that can be set
- by hardware MPEG encoders. A new MPEG control mechanism was created
- in kernel 2.6.18 that replaces these ioctls. See the V4L2 specification
- (section 1.9: Extended controls) for more information on this topic.
-Who: Hans Verkuil <hverkuil@xs4all.nl> and
- Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
-
----------------------------
-
-What: /sys/devices/.../power/state
- dev->power.power_state
- dpm_runtime_{suspend,resume)()
+What: dev->power.power_state
When: July 2007
Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
---------------------------
-What: RAW driver (CONFIG_RAW_DRIVER)
-When: December 2005
-Why: declared obsolete since kernel 2.6.3
- O_DIRECT can be used instead
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
-
----------------------------
-
-What: raw1394: requests of type RAW1394_REQ_ISO_SEND, RAW1394_REQ_ISO_LISTEN
-When: June 2007
-Why: Deprecated in favour of the more efficient and robust rawiso interface.
- Affected are applications which use the deprecated part of libraw1394
- (raw1394_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_write, raw1394_start_iso_rcv,
- raw1394_stop_iso_rcv) or bypass libraw1394.
-Who: Dan Dennedy <dan@dennedy.org>, Stefan Richter <stefanr@s5r6.in-berlin.de>
-
----------------------------
-
What: old NCR53C9x driver
When: October 2007
Why: Replaced by the much better esp_scsi driver. Actual low-level
---------------------------
What: Video4Linux API 1 ioctls and video_decoder.h from Video devices.
-When: December 2006
-Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API. during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
+When: December 2008
+Files: include/linux/video_decoder.h include/linux/videodev.h
+Check: include/linux/video_decoder.h include/linux/videodev.h
+Why: V4L1 AP1 was replaced by V4L2 API during migration from 2.4 to 2.6
series. The old API have lots of drawbacks and don't provide enough
means to work with all video and audio standards. The newer API is
already available on the main drivers and should be used instead.
Decoder iocts are using internally to allow video drivers to
communicate with video decoders. This should also be improved to allow
V4L2 calls being translated into compatible internal ioctls.
-Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@brturbo.com.br>
+ Compatibility ioctls will be provided, for a while, via
+ v4l1-compat module.
+Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
---------------------------
---------------------------
+What: sys_sysctl
+When: September 2010
+Option: CONFIG_SYSCTL_SYSCALL
+Why: The same information is available in a more convenient from
+ /proc/sys, and none of the sysctl variables appear to be
+ important performance wise.
+
+ Binary sysctls are a long standing source of subtle kernel
+ bugs and security issues.
+
+ When I looked several months ago all I could find after
+ searching several distributions were 5 user space programs and
+ glibc (which falls back to /proc/sys) using this syscall.
+
+ The man page for sysctl(2) documents it as unusable for user
+ space programs.
+
+ sysctl(2) is not generally ABI compatible to a 32bit user
+ space application on a 64bit and a 32bit kernel.
+
+ For the last several months the policy has been no new binary
+ sysctls and no one has put forward an argument to use them.
+
+ Binary sysctls issues seem to keep happening appearing so
+ properly deprecating them (with a warning to user space) and a
+ 2 year grace warning period will mean eventually we can kill
+ them and end the pain.
+
+ In the mean time individual binary sysctls can be dealt with
+ in a piecewise fashion.
+
+Who: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
+
+---------------------------
+
What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
When: August 2006
Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
+Check: kernel_thread
Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
---------------------------
-What: CONFIG_FORCED_INLINING
-When: June 2006
-Why: Config option is there to see if gcc is good enough. (in january
- 2006). If it is, the behavior should just be the default. If it's not,
- the option should just go away entirely.
-Who: Arjan van de Ven
-
----------------------------
-
What: eepro100 network driver
When: January 2007
Why: replaced by the e100 driver
---------------------------
-What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE_DRIVER
-When: options in 2.6.20, code in 2.6.22
-Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
-
----------------------------
-
What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
(temporary transition config option provided until then)
The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
---------------------------
-What: USB driver API moves to EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL
-When: February 2008
-Files: include/linux/usb.h, drivers/usb/core/driver.c
-Why: The USB subsystem has changed a lot over time, and it has been
- possible to create userspace USB drivers using usbfs/libusb/gadgetfs
- that operate as fast as the USB bus allows. Because of this, the USB
- subsystem will not be allowing closed source kernel drivers to
- register with it, after this grace period is over. If anyone needs
- any help in converting their closed source drivers over to use the
- userspace filesystems, please contact the
- linux-usb-devel@lists.sourceforge.net mailing list, and the developers
- there will be glad to help you out.
-Who: Greg Kroah-Hartman <gregkh@suse.de>
-
----------------------------
-
-What: Interrupt only SA_* flags
-When: September 2007
-Why: The interrupt related SA_* flags are replaced by IRQF_* to move them
- out of the signal namespace.
-
-Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
-
----------------------------
-
What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
When: October 2008
Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
---------------------------
-What: i2c-isa
-When: December 2006
-Why: i2c-isa is a non-sense and doesn't fit in the device driver
- model. Drivers relying on it are better implemented as platform
- drivers.
-Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
+What: find_task_by_pid
+When: 2.6.26
+Why: With pid namespaces, calling this funciton will return the
+ wrong task when called from inside a namespace.
----------------------------
+ The best way to save a task pid and find a task by this
+ pid later, is to find this task's struct pid pointer (or get
+ it directly from the task) and call pid_task() later.
-What: i2c_adapter.list
-When: July 2007
-Why: Superfluous, this list duplicates the one maintained by the driver
- core.
-Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>,
- David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
+ If someone really needs to get a task by its pid_t, then
+ he most likely needs the find_task_by_vpid() to get the
+ task from the same namespace as the current task is in, but
+ this may be not so in general.
+
+Who: Pavel Emelyanov <xemul@openvz.org>
---------------------------
-What: drivers depending on OBSOLETE_OSS
-When: options in 2.6.22, code in 2.6.24
-Why: OSS drivers with ALSA replacements
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
+What: ACPI procfs interface
+When: July 2008
+Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008.
+ ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that
+ there is enough time for the user space to catch up.
+Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
---------------------------
-What: ACPI hooks (X86_SPEEDSTEP_CENTRINO_ACPI) in speedstep-centrino driver
-When: December 2006
-Why: Speedstep-centrino driver with ACPI hooks and acpi-cpufreq driver are
- functionally very much similar. They talk to ACPI in same way. Only
- difference between them is the way they do frequency transitions.
- One uses MSRs and the other one uses IO ports. Functionaliy of
- speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks is now merged into acpi-cpufreq.
- That means one common driver will support all Intel Enhanced Speedstep
- capable CPUs. That means less confusion over name of
- speedstep-centrino driver (with that driver supposed to be used on
- non-centrino platforms). That means less duplication of code and
- less maintenance effort and no possibility of these two drivers
- going out of sync.
- Current users of speedstep_centrino with ACPI hooks are requested to
- switch over to acpi-cpufreq driver. speedstep-centrino will continue
- to work using older non-ACPI static table based scheme even after this
- date.
-
-Who: Venkatesh Pallipadi <venkatesh.pallipadi@intel.com>
+What: /proc/acpi/button
+When: August 2007
+Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
+ since 2.6.20.
+Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
---------------------------
-What: /sys/firmware/acpi/namespace
-When: 2.6.21
-Why: The ACPI namespace is effectively the symbol list for
- the BIOS. The device names are completely arbitrary
- and have no place being exposed to user-space.
-
- For those interested in the BIOS ACPI namespace,
- the BIOS can be extracted and disassembled with acpidump
- and iasl as documented in the pmtools package here:
- http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/utils
+What: /proc/acpi/event
+When: February 2008
+Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer
+ and netlink since 2.6.23.
Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
---------------------------
-What: ACPI procfs interface
-When: July 2007
-Why: After ACPI sysfs conversion, ACPI attributes will be duplicated
- in sysfs and the ACPI procfs interface should be removed.
-Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
+What: libata spindown skipping and warning
+When: Dec 2008
+Why: Some halt(8) implementations synchronize caches for and spin
+ down libata disks because libata didn't use to spin down disk on
+ system halt (only synchronized caches).
+ Spin down on system halt is now implemented. sysfs node
+ /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop is present if
+ spin down support is available.
+ Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
+ makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, libata tracks
+ device spindown status to skip the extra spindown command and
+ warn about it.
+ This is to give userspace tools the time to get updated and will
+ be removed after userspace is reasonably updated.
+Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
---------------------------
-What: /proc/acpi/button
-When: August 2007
-Why: /proc/acpi/button has been replaced by events to the input layer
- since 2.6.20.
-Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
+What: The arch/ppc and include/asm-ppc directories
+When: Jun 2008
+Why: The arch/powerpc tree is the merged architecture for ppc32 and ppc64
+ platforms. Currently there are efforts underway to port the remaining
+ arch/ppc platforms to the merged tree. New submissions to the arch/ppc
+ tree have been frozen with the 2.6.22 kernel release and that tree will
+ remain in bug-fix only mode until its scheduled removal. Platforms
+ that are not ported by June 2008 will be removed due to the lack of an
+ interested maintainer.
+Who: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org
---------------------------
-What: sk98lin network driver
-When: July 2007
-Why: In kernel tree version of driver is unmaintained. Sk98lin driver
- replaced by the skge driver.
-Who: Stephen Hemminger <shemminger@osdl.org>
+What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks
+When: April 2010
+
+Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage
+ location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package
+ scripts, do not break.
+Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
---------------------------
-What: Compaq touchscreen device emulation
-When: Oct 2007
-Files: drivers/input/tsdev.c
-Why: The code says it was obsolete when it was written in 2001.
- tslib is a userspace library which does anything tsdev can do and
- much more besides in userspace where this code belongs. There is no
- longer any need for tsdev and applications should have converted to
- use tslib by now.
- The name "tsdev" is also extremely confusing and lots of people have
- it loaded when they don't need/use it.
-Who: Richard Purdie <rpurdie@rpsys.net>
+What: i2c-i810, i2c-prosavage and i2c-savage4
+When: May 2008
+Why: These drivers are superseded by i810fb, intelfb and savagefb.
+Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
---------------------------
-What: Multipath cached routing support in ipv4
-When: in 2.6.23
-Why: Code was merged, then submitter immediately disappeared leaving
- us with no maintainer and lots of bugs. The code should not have
- been merged in the first place, and many aspects of it's
- implementation are blocking more critical core networking
- development. It's marked EXPERIMENTAL and no distribution
- enables it because it cause obscure crashes due to unfixable bugs
- (interfaces don't return errors so memory allocation can't be
- handled, calling contexts of these interfaces make handling
- errors impossible too because they get called after we've
- totally commited to creating a route object, for example).
- This problem has existed for years and no forward progress
- has ever been made, and nobody steps up to try and salvage
- this code, so we're going to finally just get rid of it.
-Who: David S. Miller <davem@davemloft.net>
+What (Why):
+ - include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_TOS.h ipt_tos.h header files
+ (superseded by xt_TOS/xt_tos target & match)
+
+ - "forwarding" header files like ipt_mac.h in
+ include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ and include/linux/netfilter_ipv6/
+
+ - xt_CONNMARK match revision 0
+ (superseded by xt_CONNMARK match revision 1)
+
+ - xt_MARK target revisions 0 and 1
+ (superseded by xt_MARK match revision 2)
+
+ - xt_connmark match revision 0
+ (superseded by xt_connmark match revision 1)
+
+ - xt_conntrack match revision 0
+ (superseded by xt_conntrack match revision 1)
+
+ - xt_iprange match revision 0,
+ include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_iprange.h
+ (superseded by xt_iprange match revision 1)
+
+ - xt_mark match revision 0
+ (superseded by xt_mark match revision 1)
+
+When: January 2009 or Linux 2.7.0, whichever comes first
+Why: Superseded by newer revisions or modules
+Who: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@computergmbh.de>
---------------------------
-What: read_dev_chars(), read_conf_data{,_lpm}() (s390 common I/O layer)
-When: December 2007
-Why: These functions are a leftover from 2.4 times. They have several
- problems:
- - Duplication of checks that are done in the device driver's
- interrupt handler
- - common I/O layer can't do device specific error recovery
- - device driver can't be notified for conditions happening during
- execution of the function
- Device drivers should issue the read device characteristics and read
- configuration data ccws and do the appropriate error handling
- themselves.
-Who: Cornelia Huck <cornelia.huck@de.ibm.com>
+What: b43 support for firmware revision < 410
+When: July 2008
+Why: The support code for the old firmware hurts code readability/maintainability
+ and slightly hurts runtime performance. Bugfixes for the old firmware
+ are not provided by Broadcom anymore.
+Who: Michael Buesch <mb@bu3sch.de>
---------------------------
-What: i2c-ixp2000, i2c-ixp4xx and scx200_i2c drivers
-When: September 2007
-Why: Obsolete. The new i2c-gpio driver replaces all hardware-specific
- I2C-over-GPIO drivers.
-Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
+What: init_mm export
+When: 2.6.26
+Why: Not used in-tree. The current out-of-tree users used it to
+ work around problems in the CPA code which should be resolved
+ by now. One usecase was described to provide verification code
+ of the CPA operation. That's a good idea in general, but such
+ code / infrastructure should be in the kernel and not in some
+ out-of-tree driver.
+Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
+
+----------------------------
+
+What: usedac i386 kernel parameter
+When: 2.6.27
+Why: replaced by allowdac and no dac combination
+Who: Glauber Costa <gcosta@redhat.com>
---------------------------
-What: drivers depending on OSS_OBSOLETE
-When: options in 2.6.23, code in 2.6.25
-Why: obsolete OSS drivers
-Who: Adrian Bunk <bunk@stusta.de>
+What: old style serial driver for ColdFire (CONFIG_SERIAL_COLDFIRE)
+When: 2.6.28
+Why: This driver still uses the old interface and has been replaced
+ by CONFIG_SERIAL_MCF.
+Who: Sebastian Siewior <sebastian@breakpoint.cc>
---------------------------
-What: libata.spindown_compat module parameter
-When: Dec 2008
-Why: halt(8) synchronizes caches for and spins down libata disks
- because libata didn't use to spin down disk on system halt
- (only synchronized caches).
- Spin down on system halt is now implemented and can be tested
- using sysfs node /sys/class/scsi_disk/h:c:i:l/manage_start_stop.
- Because issuing spin down command to an already spun down disk
- makes some disks spin up just to spin down again, the old
- behavior needs to be maintained till userspace tool is updated
- to check the sysfs node and not to spin down disks with the
- node set to one.
- This module parameter is to give userspace tool the time to
- get updated and should be removed after userspace is
- reasonably updated.
-Who: Tejun Heo <htejun@gmail.com>
+What: /sys/o2cb symlink
+When: January 2010
+Why: /sys/fs/o2cb is the proper location for this information - /sys/o2cb
+ exists as a symlink for backwards compatibility for old versions of
+ ocfs2-tools. 2 years should be sufficient time to phase in new versions
+ which know to look in /sys/fs/o2cb.
+Who: ocfs2-devel@oss.oracle.com
---------------------------
+What: asm/semaphore.h
+When: 2.6.26
+Why: Implementation became generic; users should now include
+ linux/semaphore.h instead.
+Who: Matthew Wilcox <willy@linux.intel.com>
git://ftp.safe.ca / safe / jmp / linux-2.6 / blobdiff