[OpenAFS] Re: sysname for 3.x linux kernel

[Russ Allbery]

Ken Dreyer <ktdreyer@ktdreyer.com> writes:
> On Thu, Mar 8, 2012 at 2:14 PM, Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu> wrote:

>> The kernel version is really the wrong thing to drive @sys values from
>> anyway. =C2=A0If anything, you want the glibc version, or some combinati=
on
>> of facts that compose an ABI (which is more about glibc than about the
>> kernel).

> I remember Simon suggesting something similar with regard to glibc. I
> know this just my opinion, and it is a total nit-pick, but to me it's
> another thing that makes AFS feel "old" or "out-of-date". I know it's
> basically cosmetic and it doesn't really matter, but I wonder if there's
> value to moving on eventually.

If we move it, we should probably move it to something like amd64_linux
and just leave it at that, since tying ABIs to kernel versions is an
artifact of the way things worked with commercial UNIXes back in the day
(it made sense for Solaris or HP-UX) and really doesn't make sense for
Linux.

But it seems like a disruptive change without a lot of benefit to me.  I
suppose if we defined the default sysname as the list amd64_linux
amd64_linux26, it wouldn't be that disruptive, but it might still be
surprising (and would change the results of sys, which some sites may be
using).

The easier solution would probably be to update our installation
documentation to encourage anyone installing AFS who is using it to run
software set the sysname to something that makes sense for their
environment.

--=20
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>