Re: Removal of compat-FreeBSD

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg%britannica.bec.de@localhost>]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2015 at 09:26:48AM -0500, Greg Troxel wrote:
> 
> Maxime Villard <max%M00nBSD.net@localhost> writes:
> 
> > Apparently, compat-FreeBSD is needed by tw_cli users.
> >
> > Therefore I think I will just disable it by default in the GENERIC kernels,
> > unless anyone disagrees.
> 
> Our norms for significant changes are more or less about consensus or
> preponderance of opinion.  So far you've said that you want to
> remove/disable this, and a number of people have said they use it.  No
> one else has spoke up in favor of disabling.  We don't have evidence
> that anyone (besides you) is disabling this in their kernels.

I have asked the same question a long time ago when we pruned a bunch of
other obsolete emulations. From a security stand point, I fully agree
with Maxime. The usefulness of the FreeBSD emulation is *very* limited,
it can't even handle most FreeBSD 4 binaries. I find it highly
questionable to keep a non-trivial attack surface for the sake of a
single device driver, which most people likely don't even have. I don't
see any evidence in the tree of COMPAT_FREEBSD improving or any of the
users of tw_cli working on improving the situation by removing the need
for it. As such I find disabling COMPAT_FREEBSD by default a very good
idea for increasing the visibility of the problem. Maybe someone who
should be caring actually starts to...

Joerg