Re: [gentoo-user] Console scrollback is back again!

[Alan Mackenzie <acm@muc.de>]

Hello, Wol.

On Mon, Apr 05, 2021 at 18:44:15 +0100, antlists wrote:
> On 05/04/2021 18:12, Alan Mackenzie wrote:
> > Bug reports and other comments are welcome, of course.
> > 
> > If anybody would like the corresponding patch which works on 5.4.n, for n
> >> = 80, that is available, too.

> Why did it get removed from the kernel?

Allegedly, there were security problems with it.  I think the kernel
people had a program which fired random inputs at lots of components,
and noted when things went wrong; and things went wrong in the scroll
back component.  And they couldn't find anybody to look into these
problems.

That's the official position.  I'm a bit more cynical about it.

> If you want to get it back in, couldn't you ping Greg KH and get some 
> help - or even just advice - getting it accepted?

I have no reason to believe all the "security problems" will have been
resolved by my hacking.  I took the algorithmic bits from 4.19.97
basically unchanged.

Maybe there's not much enthusiasm for this feature, in which case I will
keep it working for myself.  Linux is basically unusable to me without
it.  There are probably quite a few patches to restore the scrollback
floating around the web by now: the changes were not particularly
difficult to anybody who knows the code, but getting to know the code
was unusually difficult.

We'll see how people react to it here, first.

> Cheers,
> Wol

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).