1 The following is a list of files and features that are going to be
2 removed in the kernel source tree. Every entry should contain what
3 exactly is going away, why it is happening, and who is going to be doing
4 the work. When the feature is removed from the kernel, it should also
5 be removed from this file.
7 ---------------------------
12 Why: prism54 FullMAC PCI / Cardbus devices used to be supported only by the
13 prism54 wireless driver. After Intersil stopped selling these
14 devices in preference for the newer more flexible SoftMAC devices
15 a SoftMAC device driver was required and prism54 did not support
16 them. The p54pci driver now exists and has been present in the kernel for
17 a while. This driver supports both SoftMAC devices and FullMAC devices.
18 The main difference between these devices was the amount of memory which
19 could be used for the firmware. The SoftMAC devices support a smaller
20 amount of memory. Because of this the SoftMAC firmware fits into FullMAC
21 devices's memory. p54pci supports not only PCI / Cardbus but also USB
22 and SPI. Since p54pci supports all devices prism54 supports
23 you will have a conflict. I'm not quite sure how distributions are
24 handling this conflict right now. prism54 was kept around due to
25 claims users may experience issues when using the SoftMAC driver.
26 Time has passed users have not reported issues. If you use prism54
27 and for whatever reason you cannot use p54pci please let us know!
28 E-mail us at: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
30 For more information see the p54 wiki page:
32 http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/p54
34 Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com>
36 ---------------------------
38 What: IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM
39 Check: IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM
42 Why: Many of IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM users are technically bogus as entropy
43 sources in the kernel's current entropy model. To resolve this, every
44 input point to the kernel's entropy pool needs to better document the
45 type of entropy source it actually is. This will be replaced with
46 additional add_*_randomness functions in drivers/char/random.c
48 Who: Robin Getz <rgetz@blackfin.uclinux.org> & Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com>
50 ---------------------------
52 What: Deprecated snapshot ioctls
55 Why: The ioctls in kernel/power/user.c were marked as deprecated long time
56 ago. Now they notify users about that so that they need to replace
57 their userspace. After some more time, remove them completely.
59 Who: Jiri Slaby <jirislaby@gmail.com>
61 ---------------------------
63 What: The ieee80211_regdom module parameter
64 When: March 2010 / desktop catchup
66 Why: This was inherited by the CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY code,
67 and currently serves as an option for users to define an
68 ISO / IEC 3166 alpha2 code for the country they are currently
69 present in. Although there are userspace API replacements for this
70 through nl80211 distributions haven't yet caught up with implementing
71 decent alternatives through standard GUIs. Although available as an
72 option through iw or wpa_supplicant its just a matter of time before
73 distributions pick up good GUI options for this. The ideal solution
74 would actually consist of intelligent designs which would do this for
75 the user automatically even when travelling through different countries.
76 Until then we leave this module parameter as a compromise.
78 When userspace improves with reasonable widely-available alternatives for
79 this we will no longer need this module parameter. This entry hopes that
80 by the super-futuristically looking date of "March 2010" we will have
81 such replacements widely available.
83 Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com>
85 ---------------------------
87 What: dev->power.power_state
89 Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing
90 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support
91 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish
92 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy
93 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to
94 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific
95 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace.
96 Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz>
98 ---------------------------
100 What: Video4Linux obsolete drivers using V4L1 API
102 Files: drivers/staging/se401/* drivers/staging/usbvideo/*
103 Check: drivers/staging/se401/se401.c drivers/staging/usbvideo/usbvideo.c
104 Why: There are some drivers still using V4L1 API, despite all efforts we've done
105 to migrate. Those drivers are for obsolete hardware that the old maintainer
106 didn't care (or not have the hardware anymore), and that no other developer
107 could find any hardware to buy. They probably have no practical usage today,
108 and people with such old hardware could probably keep using an older version
109 of the kernel. Those drivers will be moved to staging on 2.6.38 and, if nobody
110 cares enough to port and test them with V4L2 API, they'll be removed on 2.6.39.
111 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
113 ---------------------------
115 What: Video4Linux: Remove obsolete ioctl's
117 Files: include/media/videodev2.h
118 Why: Some ioctl's were defined wrong on 2.6.2 and 2.6.6, using the wrong
119 type of R/W arguments. They were fixed, but the old ioctl names are
120 still there, maintained to avoid breaking binary compatibility:
121 #define VIDIOC_OVERLAY_OLD _IOWR('V', 14, int)
122 #define VIDIOC_S_PARM_OLD _IOW('V', 22, struct v4l2_streamparm)
123 #define VIDIOC_S_CTRL_OLD _IOW('V', 28, struct v4l2_control)
124 #define VIDIOC_G_AUDIO_OLD _IOWR('V', 33, struct v4l2_audio)
125 #define VIDIOC_G_AUDOUT_OLD _IOWR('V', 49, struct v4l2_audioout)
126 #define VIDIOC_CROPCAP_OLD _IOR('V', 58, struct v4l2_cropcap)
127 There's no sense on preserving those forever, as it is very doubtful
128 that someone would try to use a such old binary with a modern kernel.
129 Removing them will allow us to remove some magic done at the V4L ioctl
132 Who: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@infradead.org>
134 ---------------------------
138 Option: CONFIG_SYSCTL_SYSCALL
139 Why: The same information is available in a more convenient from
140 /proc/sys, and none of the sysctl variables appear to be
141 important performance wise.
143 Binary sysctls are a long standing source of subtle kernel
144 bugs and security issues.
146 When I looked several months ago all I could find after
147 searching several distributions were 5 user space programs and
148 glibc (which falls back to /proc/sys) using this syscall.
150 The man page for sysctl(2) documents it as unusable for user
153 sysctl(2) is not generally ABI compatible to a 32bit user
154 space application on a 64bit and a 32bit kernel.
156 For the last several months the policy has been no new binary
157 sysctls and no one has put forward an argument to use them.
159 Binary sysctls issues seem to keep happening appearing so
160 properly deprecating them (with a warning to user space) and a
161 2 year grace warning period will mean eventually we can kill
162 them and end the pain.
164 In the mean time individual binary sysctls can be dealt with
165 in a piecewise fashion.
167 Who: Eric Biederman <ebiederm@xmission.com>
169 ---------------------------
171 What: /proc/<pid>/oom_adj
173 Why: /proc/<pid>/oom_adj allows userspace to influence the oom killer's
174 badness heuristic used to determine which task to kill when the kernel
177 The badness heuristic has since been rewritten since the introduction of
178 this tunable such that its meaning is deprecated. The value was
179 implemented as a bitshift on a score generated by the badness()
180 function that did not have any precise units of measure. With the
181 rewrite, the score is given as a proportion of available memory to the
182 task allocating pages, so using a bitshift which grows the score
183 exponentially is, thus, impossible to tune with fine granularity.
185 A much more powerful interface, /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj, was
186 introduced with the oom killer rewrite that allows users to increase or
187 decrease the badness() score linearly. This interface will replace
190 A warning will be emitted to the kernel log if an application uses this
191 deprecated interface. After it is printed once, future warnings will be
192 suppressed until the kernel is rebooted.
194 ---------------------------
196 What: CS5535/CS5536 obsolete GPIO driver
198 Files: drivers/staging/cs5535_gpio/*
199 Check: drivers/staging/cs5535_gpio/cs5535_gpio.c
200 Why: A newer driver replaces this; it is drivers/gpio/cs5535-gpio.c, and
201 integrates with the Linux GPIO subsystem. The old driver has been
202 moved to staging, and will be removed altogether around 2.6.40.
203 Please test the new driver, and ensure that the functionality you
204 need and any bugfixes from the old driver are available in the new
206 Who: Andres Salomon <dilinger@queued.net>
208 --------------------------
210 What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread)
212 Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c
214 Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should
215 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from
216 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that
217 prevents bugs and code duplication
218 Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de>
220 ---------------------------
222 What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports
223 (temporary transition config option provided until then)
224 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time.
226 Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary
227 and are often a sign of "wrong API"
228 Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com>
230 ---------------------------
232 What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment
234 Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and
236 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus
237 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement.
238 Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de>
240 ---------------------------
242 What: ACPI procfs interface
244 Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008.
245 ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that
246 there is enough time for the user space to catch up.
247 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
249 ---------------------------
251 What: CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER
253 Why: sysfs I/F for ACPI power devices, including AC and Battery,
254 has been working in upstream kenrel since 2.6.24, Sep 2007.
255 In 2.6.37, we make the sysfs I/F always built in and this option
257 Remove this option and the ACPI power procfs interface in 2.6.39.
258 Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com>
260 ---------------------------
262 What: /proc/acpi/event
264 Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer
265 and netlink since 2.6.23.
266 Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com>
268 ---------------------------
270 What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks
273 Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage
274 location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package
275 scripts, do not break.
276 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
278 ---------------------------
280 What: GPIO autorequest on gpio_direction_{input,output}() in gpiolib
282 Why: All callers should use explicit gpio_request()/gpio_free().
283 The autorequest mechanism in gpiolib was provided mostly as a
284 migration aid for legacy GPIO interfaces (for SOC based GPIOs).
285 Those users have now largely migrated. Platforms implementing
286 the GPIO interfaces without using gpiolib will see no changes.
287 Who: David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net>
288 ---------------------------
290 What: b43 support for firmware revision < 410
291 When: The schedule was July 2008, but it was decided that we are going to keep the
292 code as long as there are no major maintanance headaches.
293 So it _could_ be removed _any_ time now, if it conflicts with something new.
294 Why: The support code for the old firmware hurts code readability/maintainability
295 and slightly hurts runtime performance. Bugfixes for the old firmware
296 are not provided by Broadcom anymore.
297 Who: Michael Buesch <mb@bu3sch.de>
299 ---------------------------
301 What: /sys/o2cb symlink
303 Why: /sys/fs/o2cb is the proper location for this information - /sys/o2cb
304 exists as a symlink for backwards compatibility for old versions of
305 ocfs2-tools. 2 years should be sufficient time to phase in new versions
306 which know to look in /sys/fs/o2cb.
307 Who: ocfs2-devel@oss.oracle.com
309 ---------------------------
311 What: Ability for non root users to shm_get hugetlb pages based on mlock
314 Why: Non root users need to be part of /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_shm_group or
315 have CAP_IPC_LOCK to be able to allocate shm segments backed by
316 huge pages. The mlock based rlimit check to allow shm hugetlb is
317 inconsistent with mmap based allocations. Hence it is being
319 Who: Ravikiran Thirumalai <kiran@scalex86.org>
321 ---------------------------
323 What: CONFIG_THERMAL_HWMON
325 Why: This option was introduced just to allow older lm-sensors userspace
326 to keep working over the upgrade to 2.6.26. At the scheduled time of
327 removal fixed lm-sensors (2.x or 3.x) should be readily available.
328 Who: Rene Herman <rene.herman@gmail.com>
330 ---------------------------
332 What: Code that is now under CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT_SYSFS
333 (in net/core/net-sysfs.c)
334 When: After the only user (hal) has seen a release with the patches
335 for enough time, probably some time in 2010.
336 Why: Over 1K .text/.data size reduction, data is available in other
338 Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
340 ---------------------------
342 What: sysfs ui for changing p4-clockmod parameters
344 Why: See commits 129f8ae9b1b5be94517da76009ea956e89104ce8 and
345 e088e4c9cdb618675874becb91b2fd581ee707e6.
346 Removal is subject to fixing any remaining bugs in ACPI which may
347 cause the thermal throttling not to happen at the right time.
348 Who: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>, Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com>
350 -----------------------------
352 What: fakephp and associated sysfs files in /sys/bus/pci/slots/
354 Why: In 2.6.27, the semantics of /sys/bus/pci/slots was redefined to
355 represent a machine's physical PCI slots. The change in semantics
356 had userspace implications, as the hotplug core no longer allowed
357 drivers to create multiple sysfs files per physical slot (required
358 for multi-function devices, e.g.). fakephp was seen as a developer's
359 tool only, and its interface changed. Too late, we learned that
360 there were some users of the fakephp interface.
362 In 2.6.30, the original fakephp interface was restored. At the same
363 time, the PCI core gained the ability that fakephp provided, namely
364 function-level hot-remove and hot-add.
366 Since the PCI core now provides the same functionality, exposed in:
369 /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../remove
370 /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../rescan
372 there is no functional reason to maintain fakephp as well.
374 We will keep the existing module so that 'modprobe fakephp' will
375 present the old /sys/bus/pci/slots/... interface for compatibility,
376 but users are urged to migrate their applications to the API above.
378 After a reasonable transition period, we will remove the legacy
380 Who: Alex Chiang <achiang@hp.com>
382 ---------------------------
384 What: CONFIG_RFKILL_INPUT
386 Why: Should be implemented in userspace, policy daemon.
387 Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
389 ----------------------------
391 What: sound-slot/service-* module aliases and related clutters in
394 Why: OSS sound_core grabs all legacy minors (0-255) of SOUND_MAJOR
395 (14) and requests modules using custom sound-slot/service-*
396 module aliases. The only benefit of doing this is allowing
397 use of custom module aliases which might as well be considered
398 a bug at this point. This preemptive claiming prevents
399 alternative OSS implementations.
401 Till the feature is removed, the kernel will be requesting
402 both sound-slot/service-* and the standard char-major-* module
403 aliases and allow turning off the pre-claiming selectively via
404 CONFIG_SOUND_OSS_CORE_PRECLAIM and soundcore.preclaim_oss
407 After the transition phase is complete, both the custom module
408 aliases and switches to disable it will go away. This removal
409 will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of
410 sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too.
411 Who: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
413 ----------------------------
415 What: Support for lcd_switch and display_get in asus-laptop driver
417 Why: These two features use non-standard interfaces. There are the
418 only features that really need multiple path to guess what's
419 the right method name on a specific laptop.
421 Removing them will allow to remove a lot of code an significantly
424 This will affect the backlight code which won't be able to know
425 if the backlight is on or off. The platform display file will also be
426 write only (like the one in eeepc-laptop).
428 This should'nt affect a lot of user because they usually know
429 when their display is on or off.
431 Who: Corentin Chary <corentin.chary@gmail.com>
433 ----------------------------
435 What: sysfs-class-rfkill state file
437 Files: net/rfkill/core.c
438 Why: Documented as obsolete since Feb 2010. This file is limited to 3
439 states while the rfkill drivers can have 4 states.
440 Who: anybody or Florian Mickler <florian@mickler.org>
442 ----------------------------
444 What: sysfs-class-rfkill claim file
446 Files: net/rfkill/core.c
447 Why: It is not possible to claim an rfkill driver since 2007. This is
448 Documented as obsolete since Feb 2010.
449 Who: anybody or Florian Mickler <florian@mickler.org>
451 ----------------------------
455 Files: drivers/isdn/capi/capifs.*
456 Why: udev fully replaces this special file system that only contains CAPI
457 NCCI TTY device nodes. User space (pppdcapiplugin) works without
458 noticing the difference.
459 Who: Jan Kiszka <jan.kiszka@web.de>
461 ----------------------------
463 What: KVM paravirt mmu host support
465 Why: The paravirt mmu host support is slower than non-paravirt mmu, both
466 on newer and older hardware. It is already not exposed to the guest,
467 and kept only for live migration purposes.
468 Who: Avi Kivity <avi@redhat.com>
470 ----------------------------
472 What: iwlwifi 50XX module parameters
474 Why: The "..50" modules parameters were used to configure 5000 series and
475 up devices; different set of module parameters also available for 4965
476 with same functionalities. Consolidate both set into single place
477 in drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-agn.c
479 Who: Wey-Yi Guy <wey-yi.w.guy@intel.com>
481 ----------------------------
483 What: iwl4965 alias support
485 Why: Internal alias support has been present in module-init-tools for some
486 time, the MODULE_ALIAS("iwl4965") boilerplate aliases can be removed
489 Who: Wey-Yi Guy <wey-yi.w.guy@intel.com>
491 ---------------------------
494 Files: net/netfilter/xt_NOTRACK.c
496 Why: Superseded by xt_CT
497 Who: Netfilter developer team <netfilter-devel@vger.kernel.org>
499 ----------------------------
503 Why: The flag is a NOOP as we run interrupt handlers with interrupts disabled
504 Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de>
506 ----------------------------
508 What: The acpi_sleep=s4_nonvs command line option
510 Files: arch/x86/kernel/acpi/sleep.c
511 Why: superseded by acpi_sleep=nonvs
512 Who: Rafael J. Wysocki <rjw@sisk.pl>
514 ----------------------------
516 What: PCI DMA unmap state API
518 Why: PCI DMA unmap state API (include/linux/pci-dma.h) was replaced
519 with DMA unmap state API (DMA unmap state API can be used for
521 Who: FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp>
523 ----------------------------
525 What: DMA_xxBIT_MASK macros
527 Why: DMA_xxBIT_MASK macros were replaced with DMA_BIT_MASK() macros.
528 Who: FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp>
530 ----------------------------
532 What: namespace cgroup (ns_cgroup)
534 Why: The ns_cgroup leads to some problems:
535 * cgroup creation is out-of-control
536 * cgroup name can conflict when pids are looping
537 * it is not possible to have a single process handling
538 a lot of namespaces without falling in a exponential creation time
539 * we may want to create a namespace without creating a cgroup
541 The ns_cgroup is replaced by a compatibility flag 'clone_children',
542 where a newly created cgroup will copy the parent cgroup values.
543 The userspace has to manually create a cgroup and add a task to
545 Who: Daniel Lezcano <daniel.lezcano@free.fr>
547 ----------------------------
549 What: iwlwifi disable_hw_scan module parameters
551 Why: Hareware scan is the prefer method for iwlwifi devices for
552 scanning operation. Remove software scan support for all the
555 Who: Wey-Yi Guy <wey-yi.w.guy@intel.com>
557 ----------------------------
559 What: access to nfsd auth cache through sys_nfsservctl or '.' files
560 in the 'nfsd' filesystem.
562 Why: This is a legacy interface which have been replaced by a more
563 dynamic cache. Continuing to maintain this interface is an
565 Who: NeilBrown <neilb@suse.de>
567 ----------------------------
571 Why: This field is deprecated. I2C device drivers shouldn't change their
572 behavior based on the underlying I2C adapter. Instead, the I2C
573 adapter driver should instantiate the I2C devices and provide the
574 needed platform-specific information.
575 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
577 ----------------------------
579 What: cancel_rearming_delayed_work[queue]()
582 Why: The functions have been superceded by cancel_delayed_work_sync()
583 quite some time ago. The conversion is trivial and there is no
585 Who: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org>
587 ----------------------------
589 What: Legacy, non-standard chassis intrusion detection interface.
591 Why: The adm9240, w83792d and w83793 hardware monitoring drivers have
592 legacy interfaces for chassis intrusion detection. A standard
593 interface has been added to each driver, so the legacy interface
595 Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org>
597 ----------------------------
599 What: noswapaccount kernel command line parameter
601 Why: The original implementation of memsw feature enabled by
602 CONFIG_CGROUP_MEM_RES_CTLR_SWAP could be disabled by the noswapaccount
603 kernel parameter (introduced in 2.6.29-rc1). Later on, this decision
604 turned out to be not ideal because we cannot have the feature compiled
605 in and disabled by default and let only interested to enable it
606 (e.g. general distribution kernels might need it). Therefore we have
607 added swapaccount[=0|1] parameter (introduced in 2.6.37) which provides
608 the both possibilities. If we remove noswapaccount we will have
609 less command line parameters with the same functionality and we
610 can also cleanup the parameter handling a bit ().
611 Who: Michal Hocko <mhocko@suse.cz>
613 ----------------------------