tree 0f7cfb258a663d99ebeedf8ed3b9637b266b021c
parent caca9510ff4e5d842c0589110243d60927836222
author Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com> 1313795710 -0700
committer Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org> 1314292648 -0700

Add a personality to report 2.6.x version numbers

I ran into a couple of programs which broke with the new Linux 3.0
version.  Some of those were binary only.  I tried to use LD_PRELOAD to
work around it, but it was quite difficult and in one case impossible
because of a mix of 32bit and 64bit executables.

For example, all kind of management software from HP doesnt work, unless
we pretend to run a 2.6 kernel.

  $ uname -a
  Linux svivoipvnx001 3.0.0-08107-g97cd98f #1062 SMP Fri Aug 12 18:11:45 CEST 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

  $ hpacucli ctrl all show

  Error: No controllers detected.

  $ rpm -qf /usr/sbin/hpacucli
  hpacucli-8.75-12.0

Another notable case is that Python now reports "linux3" from
sys.platform(); which in turn can break things that were checking
sys.platform() == "linux2":

  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664564

It seems pretty clear to me though it's a bug in the apps that are using
'==' instead of .startswith(), but this allows us to unbreak broken
programs.

This patch adds a UNAME26 personality that makes the kernel report a
2.6.40+x version number instead.  The x is the x in 3.x.

I know this is somewhat ugly, but I didn't find a better workaround, and
compatibility to existing programs is important.

Some programs also read /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease.  This can be worked
around in user space with mount --bind (and a mount namespace)

To use:

  wget ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/ak/uname26/uname26.c
  gcc -o uname26 uname26.c
  ./uname26 program

Signed-off-by: Andi Kleen <ak@linux.intel.com>
Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@linux-foundation.org>