[OpenAFS-devel] DRAFT: New sysname standard

[Chas Williams]

>Indeed, this is why the original Linux-AFS ports used i386_linux[123]
>because there were 3 ABI versions.  The kernel modules were

well i am against that, specifically, the [123] bit.  since ordinary
mortals are going to use sys_name it would be nice if it was a little
more meaningful.  most people dont think 'abi 1', oh yeah, libc.
'abi 2', oh yeah, glibc 2.1.

>Honestly, this is really only a problem on Linux.  I can't think of
>any other system that has this same problem where the kernel/OS/ABI
>interfaces aren't tied to each other in some way.  Linux is the only
>system where you can have multiple primary ABIs with the same "kernel
>version".

well... irix actually has multiple abi's (o32/n32/n64).  sgi_65 
can run any of these.  the kernel and the userland are tightly coupled
though unlike linux, where the same basic kernel can be used on
practically any linux distribution.