1The following is a list of files and features that are going to be 2removed in the kernel source tree. Every entry should contain what 3exactly is going away, why it is happening, and who is going to be doing 4the work. When the feature is removed from the kernel, it should also 5be removed from this file. The suggested deprecation period is 3 releases. 6 7--------------------------- 8 9What: ddebug_query="query" boot cmdline param 10When: v3.8 11Why: obsoleted by dyndbg="query" and module.dyndbg="query" 12Who: Jim Cromie <jim.cromie@gmail.com>, Jason Baron <jbaron@redhat.com> 13 14--------------------------- 15 16What: CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE, and its ability to call APM BIOS in idle 17When: 2012 18Why: This optional sub-feature of APM is of dubious reliability, 19 and ancient APM laptops are likely better served by calling HLT. 20 Deleting CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE allows x86 to stop exporting 21 the pm_idle function pointer to modules. 22Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> 23 24---------------------------- 25 26What: x86_32 "no-hlt" cmdline param 27When: 2012 28Why: remove a branch from idle path, simplify code used by everybody. 29 This option disabled the use of HLT in idle and machine_halt() 30 for hardware that was flakey 15-years ago. Today we have 31 "idle=poll" that removed HLT from idle, and so if such a machine 32 is still running the upstream kernel, "idle=poll" is likely sufficient. 33Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> 34 35---------------------------- 36 37What: x86 "idle=mwait" cmdline param 38When: 2012 39Why: simplify x86 idle code 40Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> 41 42---------------------------- 43 44What: PRISM54 45When: 2.6.34 46 47Why: prism54 FullMAC PCI / Cardbus devices used to be supported only by the 48 prism54 wireless driver. After Intersil stopped selling these 49 devices in preference for the newer more flexible SoftMAC devices 50 a SoftMAC device driver was required and prism54 did not support 51 them. The p54pci driver now exists and has been present in the kernel for 52 a while. This driver supports both SoftMAC devices and FullMAC devices. 53 The main difference between these devices was the amount of memory which 54 could be used for the firmware. The SoftMAC devices support a smaller 55 amount of memory. Because of this the SoftMAC firmware fits into FullMAC 56 devices's memory. p54pci supports not only PCI / Cardbus but also USB 57 and SPI. Since p54pci supports all devices prism54 supports 58 you will have a conflict. I'm not quite sure how distributions are 59 handling this conflict right now. prism54 was kept around due to 60 claims users may experience issues when using the SoftMAC driver. 61 Time has passed users have not reported issues. If you use prism54 62 and for whatever reason you cannot use p54pci please let us know! 63 E-mail us at: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org 64 65 For more information see the p54 wiki page: 66 67 http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/p54 68 69Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com> 70 71--------------------------- 72 73What: IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM 74Check: IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM 75When: July 2009 76 77Why: Many of IRQF_SAMPLE_RANDOM users are technically bogus as entropy 78 sources in the kernel's current entropy model. To resolve this, every 79 input point to the kernel's entropy pool needs to better document the 80 type of entropy source it actually is. This will be replaced with 81 additional add_*_randomness functions in drivers/char/random.c 82 83Who: Robin Getz <rgetz@blackfin.uclinux.org> & Matt Mackall <mpm@selenic.com> 84 85--------------------------- 86 87What: The ieee80211_regdom module parameter 88When: March 2010 / desktop catchup 89 90Why: This was inherited by the CONFIG_WIRELESS_OLD_REGULATORY code, 91 and currently serves as an option for users to define an 92 ISO / IEC 3166 alpha2 code for the country they are currently 93 present in. Although there are userspace API replacements for this 94 through nl80211 distributions haven't yet caught up with implementing 95 decent alternatives through standard GUIs. Although available as an 96 option through iw or wpa_supplicant its just a matter of time before 97 distributions pick up good GUI options for this. The ideal solution 98 would actually consist of intelligent designs which would do this for 99 the user automatically even when travelling through different countries. 100 Until then we leave this module parameter as a compromise. 101 102 When userspace improves with reasonable widely-available alternatives for 103 this we will no longer need this module parameter. This entry hopes that 104 by the super-futuristically looking date of "March 2010" we will have 105 such replacements widely available. 106 107Who: Luis R. Rodriguez <lrodriguez@atheros.com> 108 109--------------------------- 110 111What: dev->power.power_state 112When: July 2007 113Why: Broken design for runtime control over driver power states, confusing 114 driver-internal runtime power management with: mechanisms to support 115 system-wide sleep state transitions; event codes that distinguish 116 different phases of swsusp "sleep" transitions; and userspace policy 117 inputs. This framework was never widely used, and most attempts to 118 use it were broken. Drivers should instead be exposing domain-specific 119 interfaces either to kernel or to userspace. 120Who: Pavel Machek <pavel@ucw.cz> 121 122--------------------------- 123 124What: /proc/<pid>/oom_adj 125When: August 2012 126Why: /proc/<pid>/oom_adj allows userspace to influence the oom killer's 127 badness heuristic used to determine which task to kill when the kernel 128 is out of memory. 129 130 The badness heuristic has since been rewritten since the introduction of 131 this tunable such that its meaning is deprecated. The value was 132 implemented as a bitshift on a score generated by the badness() 133 function that did not have any precise units of measure. With the 134 rewrite, the score is given as a proportion of available memory to the 135 task allocating pages, so using a bitshift which grows the score 136 exponentially is, thus, impossible to tune with fine granularity. 137 138 A much more powerful interface, /proc/<pid>/oom_score_adj, was 139 introduced with the oom killer rewrite that allows users to increase or 140 decrease the badness score linearly. This interface will replace 141 /proc/<pid>/oom_adj. 142 143 A warning will be emitted to the kernel log if an application uses this 144 deprecated interface. After it is printed once, future warnings will be 145 suppressed until the kernel is rebooted. 146 147--------------------------- 148 149What: remove EXPORT_SYMBOL(kernel_thread) 150When: August 2006 151Files: arch/*/kernel/*_ksyms.c 152Check: kernel_thread 153Why: kernel_thread is a low-level implementation detail. Drivers should 154 use the <linux/kthread.h> API instead which shields them from 155 implementation details and provides a higherlevel interface that 156 prevents bugs and code duplication 157Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> 158 159--------------------------- 160 161What: Unused EXPORT_SYMBOL/EXPORT_SYMBOL_GPL exports 162 (temporary transition config option provided until then) 163 The transition config option will also be removed at the same time. 164When: before 2.6.19 165Why: Unused symbols are both increasing the size of the kernel binary 166 and are often a sign of "wrong API" 167Who: Arjan van de Ven <arjan@linux.intel.com> 168 169--------------------------- 170 171What: PHYSDEVPATH, PHYSDEVBUS, PHYSDEVDRIVER in the uevent environment 172When: October 2008 173Why: The stacking of class devices makes these values misleading and 174 inconsistent. 175 Class devices should not carry any of these properties, and bus 176 devices have SUBSYTEM and DRIVER as a replacement. 177Who: Kay Sievers <kay.sievers@suse.de> 178 179--------------------------- 180 181What: ACPI procfs interface 182When: July 2008 183Why: ACPI sysfs conversion should be finished by January 2008. 184 ACPI procfs interface will be removed in July 2008 so that 185 there is enough time for the user space to catch up. 186Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com> 187 188--------------------------- 189 190What: CONFIG_ACPI_PROCFS_POWER 191When: 2.6.39 192Why: sysfs I/F for ACPI power devices, including AC and Battery, 193 has been working in upstream kernel since 2.6.24, Sep 2007. 194 In 2.6.37, we make the sysfs I/F always built in and this option 195 disabled by default. 196 Remove this option and the ACPI power procfs interface in 2.6.39. 197Who: Zhang Rui <rui.zhang@intel.com> 198 199--------------------------- 200 201What: /proc/acpi/event 202When: February 2008 203Why: /proc/acpi/event has been replaced by events via the input layer 204 and netlink since 2.6.23. 205Who: Len Brown <len.brown@intel.com> 206 207--------------------------- 208 209What: i386/x86_64 bzImage symlinks 210When: April 2010 211 212Why: The i386/x86_64 merge provides a symlink to the old bzImage 213 location so not yet updated user space tools, e.g. package 214 scripts, do not break. 215Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> 216 217--------------------------- 218 219What: GPIO autorequest on gpio_direction_{input,output}() in gpiolib 220When: February 2010 221Why: All callers should use explicit gpio_request()/gpio_free(). 222 The autorequest mechanism in gpiolib was provided mostly as a 223 migration aid for legacy GPIO interfaces (for SOC based GPIOs). 224 Those users have now largely migrated. Platforms implementing 225 the GPIO interfaces without using gpiolib will see no changes. 226Who: David Brownell <dbrownell@users.sourceforge.net> 227--------------------------- 228 229What: b43 support for firmware revision < 410 230When: The schedule was July 2008, but it was decided that we are going to keep the 231 code as long as there are no major maintanance headaches. 232 So it _could_ be removed _any_ time now, if it conflicts with something new. 233Why: The support code for the old firmware hurts code readability/maintainability 234 and slightly hurts runtime performance. Bugfixes for the old firmware 235 are not provided by Broadcom anymore. 236Who: Michael Buesch <m@bues.ch> 237 238--------------------------- 239 240What: Ability for non root users to shm_get hugetlb pages based on mlock 241 resource limits 242When: 2.6.31 243Why: Non root users need to be part of /proc/sys/vm/hugetlb_shm_group or 244 have CAP_IPC_LOCK to be able to allocate shm segments backed by 245 huge pages. The mlock based rlimit check to allow shm hugetlb is 246 inconsistent with mmap based allocations. Hence it is being 247 deprecated. 248Who: Ravikiran Thirumalai <kiran@scalex86.org> 249 250--------------------------- 251 252What: Code that is now under CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT_SYSFS 253 (in net/core/net-sysfs.c) 254When: 3.5 255Why: Over 1K .text/.data size reduction, data is available in other 256 ways (ioctls) 257Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> 258 259--------------------------- 260 261What: sysfs ui for changing p4-clockmod parameters 262When: September 2009 263Why: See commits 129f8ae9b1b5be94517da76009ea956e89104ce8 and 264 e088e4c9cdb618675874becb91b2fd581ee707e6. 265 Removal is subject to fixing any remaining bugs in ACPI which may 266 cause the thermal throttling not to happen at the right time. 267Who: Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>, Matthew Garrett <mjg@redhat.com> 268 269----------------------------- 270 271What: fakephp and associated sysfs files in /sys/bus/pci/slots/ 272When: 2011 273Why: In 2.6.27, the semantics of /sys/bus/pci/slots was redefined to 274 represent a machine's physical PCI slots. The change in semantics 275 had userspace implications, as the hotplug core no longer allowed 276 drivers to create multiple sysfs files per physical slot (required 277 for multi-function devices, e.g.). fakephp was seen as a developer's 278 tool only, and its interface changed. Too late, we learned that 279 there were some users of the fakephp interface. 280 281 In 2.6.30, the original fakephp interface was restored. At the same 282 time, the PCI core gained the ability that fakephp provided, namely 283 function-level hot-remove and hot-add. 284 285 Since the PCI core now provides the same functionality, exposed in: 286 287 /sys/bus/pci/rescan 288 /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../remove 289 /sys/bus/pci/devices/.../rescan 290 291 there is no functional reason to maintain fakephp as well. 292 293 We will keep the existing module so that 'modprobe fakephp' will 294 present the old /sys/bus/pci/slots/... interface for compatibility, 295 but users are urged to migrate their applications to the API above. 296 297 After a reasonable transition period, we will remove the legacy 298 fakephp interface. 299Who: Alex Chiang <achiang@hp.com> 300 301--------------------------- 302 303What: CONFIG_RFKILL_INPUT 304When: 2.6.33 305Why: Should be implemented in userspace, policy daemon. 306Who: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net> 307 308---------------------------- 309 310What: sound-slot/service-* module aliases and related clutters in 311 sound/sound_core.c 312When: August 2010 313Why: OSS sound_core grabs all legacy minors (0-255) of SOUND_MAJOR 314 (14) and requests modules using custom sound-slot/service-* 315 module aliases. The only benefit of doing this is allowing 316 use of custom module aliases which might as well be considered 317 a bug at this point. This preemptive claiming prevents 318 alternative OSS implementations. 319 320 Till the feature is removed, the kernel will be requesting 321 both sound-slot/service-* and the standard char-major-* module 322 aliases and allow turning off the pre-claiming selectively via 323 CONFIG_SOUND_OSS_CORE_PRECLAIM and soundcore.preclaim_oss 324 kernel parameter. 325 326 After the transition phase is complete, both the custom module 327 aliases and switches to disable it will go away. This removal 328 will also allow making ALSA OSS emulation independent of 329 sound_core. The dependency will be broken then too. 330Who: Tejun Heo <tj@kernel.org> 331 332---------------------------- 333 334What: sysfs-class-rfkill state file 335When: Feb 2014 336Files: net/rfkill/core.c 337Why: Documented as obsolete since Feb 2010. This file is limited to 3 338 states while the rfkill drivers can have 4 states. 339Who: anybody or Florian Mickler <florian@mickler.org> 340 341---------------------------- 342 343What: sysfs-class-rfkill claim file 344When: Feb 2012 345Files: net/rfkill/core.c 346Why: It is not possible to claim an rfkill driver since 2007. This is 347 Documented as obsolete since Feb 2010. 348Who: anybody or Florian Mickler <florian@mickler.org> 349 350---------------------------- 351 352What: iwlwifi 50XX module parameters 353When: 3.0 354Why: The "..50" modules parameters were used to configure 5000 series and 355 up devices; different set of module parameters also available for 4965 356 with same functionalities. Consolidate both set into single place 357 in drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-agn.c 358 359Who: Wey-Yi Guy <wey-yi.w.guy@intel.com> 360 361---------------------------- 362 363What: iwl4965 alias support 364When: 3.0 365Why: Internal alias support has been present in module-init-tools for some 366 time, the MODULE_ALIAS("iwl4965") boilerplate aliases can be removed 367 with no impact. 368 369Who: Wey-Yi Guy <wey-yi.w.guy@intel.com> 370 371--------------------------- 372 373What: xt_NOTRACK 374Files: net/netfilter/xt_NOTRACK.c 375When: April 2011 376Why: Superseded by xt_CT 377Who: Netfilter developer team <netfilter-devel@vger.kernel.org> 378 379---------------------------- 380 381What: IRQF_DISABLED 382When: 2.6.36 383Why: The flag is a NOOP as we run interrupt handlers with interrupts disabled 384Who: Thomas Gleixner <tglx@linutronix.de> 385 386---------------------------- 387 388What: PCI DMA unmap state API 389When: August 2012 390Why: PCI DMA unmap state API (include/linux/pci-dma.h) was replaced 391 with DMA unmap state API (DMA unmap state API can be used for 392 any bus). 393Who: FUJITA Tomonori <fujita.tomonori@lab.ntt.co.jp> 394 395---------------------------- 396 397What: iwlwifi disable_hw_scan module parameters 398When: 3.0 399Why: Hareware scan is the prefer method for iwlwifi devices for 400 scanning operation. Remove software scan support for all the 401 iwlwifi devices. 402 403Who: Wey-Yi Guy <wey-yi.w.guy@intel.com> 404 405---------------------------- 406 407What: Legacy, non-standard chassis intrusion detection interface. 408When: June 2011 409Why: The adm9240, w83792d and w83793 hardware monitoring drivers have 410 legacy interfaces for chassis intrusion detection. A standard 411 interface has been added to each driver, so the legacy interface 412 can be removed. 413Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org> 414 415---------------------------- 416 417What: xt_connlimit rev 0 418When: 2012 419Who: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@medozas.de> 420Files: net/netfilter/xt_connlimit.c 421 422---------------------------- 423 424What: ipt_addrtype match include file 425When: 2012 426Why: superseded by xt_addrtype 427Who: Florian Westphal <fw@strlen.de> 428Files: include/linux/netfilter_ipv4/ipt_addrtype.h 429 430---------------------------- 431 432What: i2c_driver.attach_adapter 433 i2c_driver.detach_adapter 434When: September 2011 435Why: These legacy callbacks should no longer be used as i2c-core offers 436 a variety of preferable alternative ways to instantiate I2C devices. 437Who: Jean Delvare <khali@linux-fr.org> 438 439---------------------------- 440 441What: Opening a radio device node will no longer automatically switch the 442 tuner mode from tv to radio. 443When: 3.3 444Why: Just opening a V4L device should not change the state of the hardware 445 like that. It's very unexpected and against the V4L spec. Instead, you 446 switch to radio mode by calling VIDIOC_S_FREQUENCY. This is the second 447 and last step of the move to consistent handling of tv and radio tuners. 448Who: Hans Verkuil <hans.verkuil@cisco.com> 449 450---------------------------- 451 452What: g_file_storage driver 453When: 3.8 454Why: This driver has been superseded by g_mass_storage. 455Who: Alan Stern <stern@rowland.harvard.edu> 456 457---------------------------- 458 459What: threeg and interface sysfs files in /sys/devices/platform/acer-wmi 460When: 2012 461Why: In 3.0, we can now autodetect internal 3G device and already have 462 the threeg rfkill device. So, we plan to remove threeg sysfs support 463 for it's no longer necessary. 464 465 We also plan to remove interface sysfs file that exposed which ACPI-WMI 466 interface that was used by acer-wmi driver. It will replaced by 467 information log when acer-wmi initial. 468Who: Lee, Chun-Yi <jlee@novell.com> 469 470--------------------------- 471 472What: /sys/devices/platform/_UDC_/udc/_UDC_/is_dualspeed file and 473 is_dualspeed line in /sys/devices/platform/ci13xxx_*/udc/device file. 474When: 3.8 475Why: The is_dualspeed file is superseded by maximum_speed in the same 476 directory and is_dualspeed line in device file is superseded by 477 max_speed line in the same file. 478 479 The maximum_speed/max_speed specifies maximum speed supported by UDC. 480 To check if dualspeeed is supported, check if the value is >= 3. 481 Various possible speeds are defined in <linux/usb/ch9.h>. 482Who: Michal Nazarewicz <mina86@mina86.com> 483 484---------------------------- 485 486What: The XFS nodelaylog mount option 487When: 3.3 488Why: The delaylog mode that has been the default since 2.6.39 has proven 489 stable, and the old code is in the way of additional improvements in 490 the log code. 491Who: Christoph Hellwig <hch@lst.de> 492 493---------------------------- 494 495What: iwlagn alias support 496When: 3.5 497Why: The iwlagn module has been renamed iwlwifi. The alias will be around 498 for backward compatibility for several cycles and then dropped. 499Who: Don Fry <donald.h.fry@intel.com> 500 501---------------------------- 502 503What: pci_scan_bus_parented() 504When: 3.5 505Why: The pci_scan_bus_parented() interface creates a new root bus. The 506 bus is created with default resources (ioport_resource and 507 iomem_resource) that are always wrong, so we rely on arch code to 508 correct them later. Callers of pci_scan_bus_parented() should 509 convert to using pci_scan_root_bus() so they can supply a list of 510 bus resources when the bus is created. 511Who: Bjorn Helgaas <bhelgaas@google.com> 512 513---------------------------- 514 515What: Low Performance USB Block driver ("CONFIG_BLK_DEV_UB") 516When: 3.6 517Why: This driver provides support for USB storage devices like "USB 518 sticks". As of now, it is deactivated in Debian, Fedora and 519 Ubuntu. All current users can switch over to usb-storage 520 (CONFIG_USB_STORAGE) which only drawback is the additional SCSI 521 stack. 522Who: Sebastian Andrzej Siewior <sebastian@breakpoint.cc> 523 524---------------------------- 525 526What: kmap_atomic(page, km_type) 527When: 3.5 528Why: The old kmap_atomic() with two arguments is deprecated, we only 529 keep it for backward compatibility for few cycles and then drop it. 530Who: Cong Wang <amwang@redhat.com> 531 532---------------------------- 533 534What: get_robust_list syscall 535When: 2013 536Why: There appear to be no production users of the get_robust_list syscall, 537 and it runs the risk of leaking address locations, allowing the bypass 538 of ASLR. It was only ever intended for debugging, so it should be 539 removed. 540Who: Kees Cook <keescook@chromium.org> 541 542---------------------------- 543 544What: Removing the pn544 raw driver. 545When: 3.6 546Why: With the introduction of the NFC HCI and SHDL kernel layers, pn544.c 547 is being replaced by pn544_hci.c which is accessible through the netlink 548 and socket NFC APIs. Moreover, pn544.c is outdated and does not seem to 549 work properly with the latest Android stacks. 550 Having 2 drivers for the same hardware is confusing and as such we 551 should only keep the one following the kernel NFC APIs. 552Who: Samuel Ortiz <sameo@linux.intel.com> 553 554---------------------------- 555 556What: setitimer accepts user NULL pointer (value) 557When: 3.6 558Why: setitimer is not returning -EFAULT if user pointer is NULL. This 559 violates the spec. 560Who: Sasikantha Babu <sasikanth.v19@gmail.com> 561 562---------------------------- 563 564What: remove bogus DV presets V4L2_DV_1080I29_97, V4L2_DV_1080I30 and 565 V4L2_DV_1080I25 566When: 3.6 567Why: These HDTV formats do not exist and were added by a confused mind 568 (that was me, to be precise...) 569Who: Hans Verkuil <hans.verkuil@cisco.com> 570 571---------------------------- 572 573What: V4L2_CID_HCENTER, V4L2_CID_VCENTER V4L2 controls 574When: 3.7 575Why: The V4L2_CID_VCENTER, V4L2_CID_HCENTER controls have been deprecated 576 for about 4 years and they are not used by any mainline driver. 577 There are newer controls (V4L2_CID_PAN*, V4L2_CID_TILT*) that provide 578 similar functionality. 579Who: Sylwester Nawrocki <sylvester.nawrocki@gmail.com> 580 581---------------------------- 582 583What: cgroup option updates via remount 584When: March 2013 585Why: Remount currently allows changing bound subsystems and 586 release_agent. Rebinding is hardly useful as it only works 587 when the hierarchy is empty and release_agent itself should be 588 replaced with conventional fsnotify. 589 590---------------------------- 591 592What: KVM debugfs statistics 593When: 2013 594Why: KVM tracepoints provide mostly equivalent information in a much more 595 flexible fashion. 596 597---------------------------- 598 599What: at91-mci driver ("CONFIG_MMC_AT91") 600When: 3.7 601Why: There are two mci drivers: at91-mci and atmel-mci. The PDC support 602 was added to atmel-mci as a first step to support more chips. 603 Then at91-mci was kept only for old IP versions (on at91rm9200 and 604 at91sam9261). The support of these IP versions has just been added 605 to atmel-mci, so atmel-mci can be used for all chips. 606Who: Ludovic Desroches <ludovic.desroches@atmel.com> 607 608---------------------------- 609 610What: net/wanrouter/ 611When: June 2013 612Why: Unsupported/unmaintained/unused since 2.6 613 614---------------------------- 615

