Re: [PATCH] ppc64 utmp changes

[Jakub Jelinek <jakub at redhat dot com>]

On Mon, Sep 30, 2002 at 04:39:06PM -0500, Steve Munroe wrote:
> 
> Jakub Jelinek write:
> 
> > Now an important question is whether we want to do something similar
> > on x86-64, s390/s390x and sparc/sparc64.
> > Because when both 32-bit and 64-bit programs will use utmp/utmpx,
> > the files will contain garbage.
> 
> Yes that is an important question!
> 
> I still don't understand by this (and other BIARCH stuff) is not a concern
> for the more mature BIARCH systems (s390, x86_64, sparc, ...). But I can
> find no evidence of this in the sysdeps source for those platforms ...

"More mature" is uncertain here, BIARCH is not mature anywhere.
Unless I missed huge improvement in debian sparc64 support, sparc64 is
limited to 64-bit gcc, glibc, gdb and a few libraries they need,
so stuff like whether there are wtmp format problems never came up (but
e.g. /usr/lib/locale format came).
My understanding is that s390x and partly x86-64 too
were initially developed as 64-bit only userlands and so
people there are using 64-bit wtmp and lastlog and 32-bit programs using
those haven't been run yet to reveal the problem.

> For powerpc64 we assume that most of the system utilities (the utilities
> that write /var/run/utmp for example) will remain 32-bit. So for us making
> 64-bit backward compatible to 32-bit utmp is the best answer. What are s390
> and x86_64 assuming?

	Jakub